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Disgraced surgeon Ian Paterson struck off by tribunal - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Ian Paterson performed unnecessary surgery and asked to be struck off without the need for a hearing.
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Birmingham & Black Country
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Ian Paterson was jailed for 15 years in May
Disgraced breast surgeon Ian Paterson who carried out unnecessary cancer operations has been struck off.
Paterson, 59, was sentenced in May to 15 years in jail for 17 counts of wounding with intent and three counts of unlawful wounding.
Nottingham Crown Court heard he exaggerated or invented the risk of cancer in patients.
A tribunal has now ruled his actions were "serious, calculated, and sustained" over a 14-year period.
Paterson, of Altrincham, Greater Manchester, was sentenced on 31 May for procedures he carried out while working at at the privately-run Little Aston and Parkway hospitals in the West Midlands.
He was not legally represented at the two-day disciplinary hearing in Manchester and had previously expressed the desire to be struck off without the need for a hearing.
Delivering its ruling earlier, the panel said: "The 10 patients who attended Mr Paterson were anxious about the physical symptoms they were experiencing.
"They put their trust in Mr Paterson to provide them with truthful medical advice, based on the results of assessments.
"The tribunal determined that Mr Paterson exploited this trust in order to carry out unnecessary procedures."
He showed a "pattern of behaviour which involved deceit and violence, and resulted in life-long consequences for the patients involved", the panel added.
He was suspended by the GMC after his initial arrest.
The NHS has paid almost £10m in compensation to his victims, while more than 600 private patients will pursue civil action against him later this year.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-40721094
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The communist soldier using charity sites to fund his war - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Several Americans and Brits are using charity donation websites to finance their war efforts in eastern Ukraine.
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BBC Trending
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Charity donation websites, often used to support victims of violence, are being employed by a number of Westerners to finance their personal war efforts.
Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, as pro-Russian separatists battle Ukrainian government forces. More than 10,000 people have died since the conflict erupted in April 2014, and recently a rebel leader declared a state called "Malorossiya" (Little Russia) in Donetsk.
Among the separatists are a number of Westerners, drawn to the country by the conflict and financing their adventures using charity crowdfunding websites - sometimes in apparent violation of website rules and Ukrainian laws.
One of the most prominent is Russell Bentley, a Texas native who describes himself as a pro-Russian communist. When the conflict started, Bentley was working as an ordinary lumberjack in Austin. Yet by December 2014 he had reached the epicentre of the conflict - armed with a rocket propelled grenade launcher and tasked with repelling Ukrainian forces at Donetsk airport, a key strategic position.
From the start, Bentley has relied on crowdfunding websites to finance his exploits. Crowdfunding websites such as GoFundMe, JustGiving and Indiegogo are typically used for charitable purposes - including to raise money for the victims of tragedies. People can donate money in exchange for small gifts or 'perks'. For example, the Manchester Evening News raised over £2.5 million through JustGiving for the families of those killed and injured in the recent Manchester terror attack in the UK.
However, Bentley and others have been using these crowdfunding websites to fund their own personal war efforts in Ukraine. In November 2014, Bentley launched a GoFundMe page to finance a "fact finding mission" to Donbas, the conflict zone that includes the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Bentley raised $2,000 and hasn't returned to the United States since.
After spending six months fighting with separatists on the front line, Bentley was reassigned and now works, he says, as an "information warrior" - producing regular pro-separatist propaganda videos on the Ukrainian war.
Bentley is affiliated with the Essence of Time movement - a Russia-based communist group which seeks to create "USSR 2.0", involving the break-up of Ukraine. Bentley's videos are hosted on the group's YouTube page, which has 25,000 subscribers.
In the videos, Bentley encourages fellow Americans to join him in eastern Ukraine. One of his recommendations is for volunteers to raise money via crowdfunding before they travel. Bentley states in one video: "Don't show up here broke… You can do a crowd fundraiser - a GoFundMe or an Indiegogo. Say you're coming here to help. Say you're coming here to find the truth. Don't say you're coming here to fight."
Russell Bentley has spent nearly three years in Donbass after crowdfunding his initial journey to Ukraine
But most crowdfunding websites - including GoFundMe and Indiegogo - strictly prohibit campaigns designed to raise money for violent purposes.
Despite the site's rules, Bentley's most recent campaign, hosted on Indiegogo, features a video of him touring the conflict areas with an automatic weapon - at one point firing at a Ukrainian military drone. He talks about his time on the front line, while encouraging armed resistance against "Ukrainian Nazis".
Bentley's current crowdfunding effort is raising funds to publish a self-authored book about his war experiences in Donbas. The Texan offers military shoulder patches and T-shirts for donations of between $100 and $999. Before BBC Trending contacted Indiegogo about Bentley's campaign, "secret" perks were offered for larger donations.
These perks could only be revealed by emailing Bentley directly, though he did disclose that a donation of $15,000 would have earned contributors a tour of Odessa and Kiev "after we liberate them". Bentley is asking for a minimum of $9,000 for the book project, and at the time of writing has raised more than half that amount.
BBC Trending approached Bentley for an interview and he declined to talk to us, but after contacting him and Indiegogo, all mention of the secret perks on his campaign have now been removed.
Bentley broadcasts his videos on YouTube via Essence of Time, a communist group
Bentley isn't a one-off. Other Westerners have been using online crowdfunding to finance their activities in eastern Ukraine since the conflict started.
Among them is 38-year-old Graham Phillips from Nottingham in the UK. Since November 2013, Phillips has been covering the conflict, broadcasting amateur videos from Donbas, often in the midst of tearing bullets and toppling buildings. His daredevil style has drawn the attention of audiences, and he boasts 86,000 subscribers on YouTube. From 2014 to 2015, Phillips was employed by Zvezda - a media channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defence, and he also freelanced for the state-operated TV channel RT.
Phillips is highly critical of the Ukrainian government and appears to back the break-up of the country. Speaking on camera to Bentley in September 2015, Phillips accuses the Ukrainian government of "lies and propaganda", before adding: "I absolutely believe that we'll win in the end."
Since May 2014, Phillips has been forbidden from entering Ukraine, on the grounds of "national security". The Ukrainian government even took the unusual step of issuing an open letter to UK authorities, condemning Phillips' actions.
Phillips says that he's an independent journalist and claims that he has financed his activities entirely through crowdfunding from January 2016 onwards - although existing records indicate he's raised less than £7,500 through crowdfunding campaigns during that time.
Graham Phillips is currently crowdfunding for a new period of reporting in eastern Europe
At least three of his campaigns have been created to fund work in Donbas, and despite being banned from the country, he's travelled to the region frequently since May 2014. On his blog, he says he enters the region via Russia, although travelling to the area via separatist controlled border crossings is currently illegal under Ukrainian law.
Because of his actions, the crowdfunding website JustGiving removed one of Phillips' appeals in July 2015. After the company was notified that Phillips was unable to legally re-enter the region, JustGiving refused to release the £2,000 that Phillips had raised through his campaign.
Although Phillips also declined to speak to BBC Trending, he has disputed the company's actions, and his campaigns remain active on Indiegogo.
Unlike Bentley, Phillips has not engaged in combat, although he has been filmed navigating a drone with the help of soldiers in Donbas and has interviewed Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Phillips is not the only Brit who has travelled to the Ukraine conflict region. Earlier this month, Benjamin Stimson, from Manchester in the UK, was sentenced by Manchester Crown Court to five years and four months in prison for assisting separatist forces in Donbass.
Phillips works with a third pro-separatist video maker - American-born Patrick Lancaster. Lancaster also describes himself as an independent journalist, and says his work is entirely funded through crowdfunding. Despite this, he seems to have raised less than $6,500 in the past eight months.
Lancaster's videos have been featured by mainstream media outlets and he has contributed to The Telegraph and Sky News.
However, some of his reporting has been openly hostile towards Ukraine and the West. Speaking on RT in February 2015, Lancaster said that the Ukraine's current president, Petro Poroshenko, is an enemy of the people.
In November 2016, Lancaster set up an Indiegogo campaign to raise $2,000 for his reporting in eastern Ukraine. Donation incentives included a guided trip from Russia into the battle zone, which would have violated the Ukrainian border crossing law, although there's no evidence that anyone took up the offer. Lancaster recently removed this perk, after BBC Trending contacted both him and Indiegogo.
On the same crowdfunding page, Lancaster offered military souvenirs from the Ukrainian war, including pieces of shrapnel or rubble from Donetsk airport. Yet, in an email to Trending, Lancaster distanced himself from Bentley, and said that he is not a fighter or an activist in the conflict.
Indiegogo released a statement on the campaigns of Bentley, Phillips and Lancaster, telling Trending: "Indiegogo's Trust and Safety team has reviewed these campaigns in detail and has taken steps to ensure they comply with our terms of use."
You can follow BBC Trending on Twitter @BBCtrending, and find us on Facebook.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-40647061
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Tourists warned over exchange rate costs - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Holidaymakers face unnecessary charges when they use their credit and debit cards overseas.
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Business
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Why you should make credit card payments in the local currency when abroad
British holidaymakers are paying hundreds of millions of pounds in unnecessary charges when they use their credit and debit cards overseas.
Shops, restaurants and cash machines are offering tourists the option of paying in pounds rather than the local currency and applying a poor exchange rate if they take up the offer.
This costs UK tourists about £500m a year, analysis for the BBC has found.
The lower rates are equivalent to charging about 6% on each transaction.
But currency trader FairFX found that on some transactions tourists can lose up to 10% by paying in sterling rather than the domestic currency.
The practice of offering a pay-in-sterling option is called dynamic currency conversion.
Most tourists are on their guard against being stung by high prices. What they don't expect is that they could be trapped by the payment system itself.
One of the biggest danger areas at the moment is the Netherlands, so much so that the Dutch consumer organisation, the Consumentenbond, is urging visitors to take extra care.
"Let me warn those that are being offered to pay by card and the shop owner says: 'Would you like me to give you the exchange rate of what it will be in pounds' - don't do it", says Sandra de Jong, who speaks for the group.
A high proportion of shops and bars in Amsterdam, the ones popular with tourists, offer dynamic currency conversion.
Dynamic currency conversion is sold as an extra convenience. But in practice, many British tourists are utterly non-plussed by the choice they are being offered.
"To be honest I find it very confusing," Jim Begg from Belfast told me as he was setting out on a bike tour round the city, "I never know which is the right one to choose, though I know one gives a much better rate."
Ollie, a student from Bristol, told me he was caught out when using a card for hotel bills.
"Initially I chose to pay in pounds because I thought that paying in home currency might be better for some reason, but we ended up paying quite a significant amount more."
At a cheesemonger, once my card went into the payment machine, up popped a choice: a price in euros and a price in pounds.
What happens is that if you buy in euros the transaction goes through a standard route, with the exchange rate set by Mastercard or Visa, although your bank can impose an additional charge.
But if you choose to pay in pounds, your money is changed on the spot by the shop's bank or payment processor. And they decide on the rate.
With the cheese I was buying, that meant a loss of 3.5% compared with the Mastercard rate.
Then, in a bar for lunch, I was offered an exchange rate which hacked a 5% slice out of my money.
And at a cash machine in a shop, the hit if I chose to pay in pounds for a cash withdrawal was nearly 10%. Less than 1.02 euros for each of my pounds, rather than the 1.13 euros available that day via Mastercard.
The lesson is a clear one: it's almost always better to pay in the local currency.
The BBC asked the currency card and foreign exchange provider FairFX to estimate how much people were being charged for dynamic currency conversion, by analysing its customers' overseas spending.
It says that based on the average fee of 6%, UK travellers are being charged just under £500m a year.
Overall, one-in-five foreign transactions are affected, but in some countries and with some transactions the proportions are much higher.
At least half of the UK spend on cards in the Netherlands and Hungary is subject to the charges, and more than half of cash withdrawals in Sweden.
Thailand, Malta, Spain, Cyprus and Turkey all come high in the list of countries where people should be careful.
Dynamic currency conversion is legal in the UK and across Europe, as long as traders display not just the price but also the exchange rate being used before the payment is made.
But often the rate isn't shown in the form British tourists are used to and, in any case, most people find it hard to assess a rate on the spot.
"The way it is pushed is abhorrent," says James Hickman from FairFX, "The amount they charge should be capped."
Who benefits? The gains are usually split between the trader and the trader's bank or payment processor.
That means dynamic currency conversion can be sold to shops and other businesses as a way of recouping their banking costs and even make a profit on top.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40702496
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How formula milk shaped the modern workplace - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Since the first commercial substitute for breast milk was launched in 1865, formula has shaped the workforce.
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Business
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It sounded like cannon fire - pirates, probably. The British East India Company's ship Benares was docked at Makassar, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Its commander gave the order to set sail and hunt them down.
Three days later, the crew still hadn't found any pirates. What they had actually heard was the eruption of a volcano called Mount Tambora.
A cocktail of toxic gas and liquefied rock roared down the volcano's slopes at the speed of a hurricane, killing thousands. Mount Tambora was left 4,000ft (1,220m) shorter.
The year was 1815. Slowly, a vast cloud of volcanic ash drifted across the northern hemisphere, blocking the Sun.
In Europe, 1816 became "the year without a summer". Crops failed. Desperate people ate rats, cats and grass.
In the German town of Darmstadt, the suffering made a deep impression on a 13-year-old boy. Justus von Liebig loved helping out in his father's workshop, concocting pigments, paints and polishes.
Liebig grew up to be a brilliant chemist, driven by the desire to help prevent hunger. He did some of the earliest research into fertilisers. He pioneered nutritional science and invented beef extract.
He invented something else, too: infant formula.
50 Things That Made the Modern Economy highlights the inventions, ideas and innovations that helped create the economic world.
Launched in 1865, Liebig's Soluble Food for Babies was a powder comprising cow's milk, wheat flour, malt flour and potassium bicarbonate.
It was the first commercial substitute for breast milk to come from rigorous scientific study.
As Liebig knew, not every baby has a mother who can breastfeed.
Justus von Liebig was inspired by the hunger he witnessed while a young man
Indeed, not every baby has a mother: before modern medicine, about one in 100 childbirths killed the mother. It's little better in the poorest countries today.
Some mothers can't make enough milk - the figures are disputed, but could be as high as one in 20.
What happened to those kids before formula?
Parents who could afford it employed wet-nurses - a respectable profession for the working girl, and an early casualty of Liebig's invention. Some used a goat or donkey.
Many gave their infants "pap", a bread-and-water mush, from hard-to-clean receptacles that must have teemed with bacteria.
No wonder death rates were high: in the early 1800s, only two in three babies who weren't breastfed lived to see their first birthday.
Germ theory was increasingly well understood, and the rubber teat had just been invented. The appeal of formula quickly spread beyond women who couldn't breastfeed.
Liebig's Soluble Food for Babies democratised a lifestyle choice that had previously been open only to the well-to-do.
It's a choice that now shapes the modern workplace. For many new mothers who want - or need - to get back to work, formula is a godsend.
And women are right to worry that taking time out might damage their careers.
Recently, economists studied the experiences of the high-powered men and women emerging from Chicago University's MBA programme and entering the worlds of consulting and high finance.
At first, the women had similar experiences to the men - but over a time, a huge gap in earnings opened up. The critical moment? Motherhood. Women took time off, and employers paid them less in response.
Ironically, the men were more likely than the women to have children. They just didn't change their working patterns.
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the few high-profile chief executives to take paternity leave
There are biological and cultural reasons why women are more likely than men to take time off when they start families.
We can't change the fact that only women have wombs, but we can try to change workplace culture.
More governments are following Scandinavia's lead by giving fathers the legal right to take time off. More leaders - such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg - are setting an example by taking it.
And formula milk makes it a whole lot easier for Dad to take over while Mum gets back to work. There is, of course, the breast-pump option. But for some, it's more of an effort than formula.
Studies show that the less time mothers have off work, the less likely they are to persevere with breastfeeding. That's hardly surprising.
There's just one problem. Evolution has had thousands of generations to optimise the recipe for breast milk.
And formula doesn't quite match it, especially in the developing world, where clean water and sterilised equipment is not always available.
A series of articles published by the medical journal the Lancet in 2016 lists the risks. Formula-fed infants get sick more often than breastfed children, leading to costs for medical treatment, and parents taking time off work.
Researchers believe breastfeeding could help prevent more than 800,000 child deaths a year
It's thought that nearly half of all diarrhoea episodes and a third of all respiratory infections could be prevented by breastfeeding.
That, combined with the risk of using formula in less than ideal circumstances, can even lead to deaths.
According to the Lancet's analysis of more than 1,300 studies, breastfeeding could prevent about 800,000 child deaths a year.
Justus von Liebig wanted to save lives. He would be horrified.
Of course, in rich countries, contaminated milk and water are far less of a concern.
But formula has another, less obvious economic cost.
Again, according to the Lancet, there is evidence that breastfed babies grow up with slightly higher IQs - about three points, when you control as best you can for other factors.
What might be the benefit of making a whole generation of children just that little bit more clever?
The Lancet calculated it to be about $300bn (£232bn) a year. That's several times the value of the global formula market.
Consequently, many governments try to promote breastfeeding. But nobody makes a quick profit from that. Selling formula, on the other hand, can be lucrative.
Which have you seen more of recently: public service announcements about breastfeeding, or formula ads?
Liebig himself never claimed that his Soluble Food for Babies was better than breast milk: he simply said he'd made it as nutritionally similar as possible.
But he quickly inspired imitators who weren't so scrupulous. By the 1890s, adverts for formula routinely portrayed it as state-of-the-art.
Meanwhile, paediatricians were starting to notice higher rates of scurvy and rickets among the offspring of mothers whom the advertising swayed.
The controversy peaked in 1974, when the campaigning group War on Want published a pamphlet called The Baby Killer about how Nestle marked and sold infant formula in Africa. Nestle boycotts lasted years.
By 1981, there was a World Health Organization (WHO) International Code of Marketing Breast-milk Substitutes, which Nestle says it drew on to devise its own marketing code, the first manufacturer to do so.
But the WHO code is not hard law, and many campaigners argue that it is still widely flouted.
What if there was a way to get the best of all worlds: equal career breaks for mothers and fathers, and breast milk for infants, without the faff of breast pumps? Perhaps there is - if you don't mind taking market forces to their logical conclusion.
Breast milk can be frozen and used at a later date
In Utah, there's a company called Ambrosia Labs. Its business model? Pay mothers around the world to express breast milk, screen it for quality, and sell it on to American mothers.
Milk is pricey - over $100 (£77) a litre (1.75 pints). But that could come down with scale - and maybe formula could be taxed, to fund a breast-milk market subsidy.
Not everyone likes this idea. Indeed, the government in Cambodia, where Ambrosia used to operate, has banned the export of breast milk.
Still, more than 150 years after Justus von Liebig sounded the death knell for wet nursing as a profession, perhaps the global supply chain could find a way to bring it back.
• None BBC Future: Are there downsides to "breast is best"?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40281403
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Marvyn Iheanacho jailed for killing boy over lost trainer - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Jurors heard Marvyn Iheanacho battered his partner's five-year-old son with "brute force".
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London
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Alex Malcolm's mother described him as "a beautiful little angel"
A man who battered his girlfriend's five-year-old son to death in a London park for losing a trainer has been jailed for life.
Witnesses heard a "child's fearful voice saying 'sorry'", loud banging and a man screaming about the loss of a shoe, Woolwich Crown Court was told.
Iheanacho, who denied murder, will serve a minimum of 18 years in prison.
Marvyn Iheanacho was found guilty of murder on Friday
The jury heard Alex suffered head and stomach injuries and died in hospital two days after the beating.
His mother, Lilya Breha, 30, told the court Iheanacho had also attacked her after she tried to call an ambulance when he returned to her flat carrying her injured son.
In a tearful interview, she said: "He (Alex) was bubbly. He was just perfect you know, he was a really, really special little boy.
"He was shy, he was so shy, and very polite. He would always say 'Mummy thank you' and 'I love you Mummy'."
Alex's mother Lilya Breha said Iheanacho hid his temper 'pretty well'
Ms Breha described Iheanacho as a "good liar" and pathetic.
Recalling how she met him through a friend after he left prison, she said he had convinced her he was innocent and a good person.
She said: "When I think about it now, to be honest I feel like it was all such a big lie and he just pretended to be a good guy pretty well."
Prosecutors revealed there had been "problems with witness interference" during the trial, with Iheanacho phoning Ms Breha from prison to try to persuade her to back him in court.
Witnesses in the park heard a man screaming about the loss of a shoe
In a victim impact statement, Alex's father said he would "never forget seeing him in his hospital bed fighting for his life. That image will stay with me forever."
"Just thinking about what's happened and trying to put words on paper is tearing me apart," he said.
One of Alex's trainers was later found in the play area by police
Sentencing, Judge Mark Dennis QC said the killer had a deeply entrenched character flaw that "leads you to overreact and lose your temper".
"You used your undoubted strength and simple brute force," against a "completely defenceless" child, he said.
He said Iheanacho, who has a string of previous convictions for violent offences, had given fake and misleading accounts to paramedics, hospital staff and police.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40716286
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Microsoft Paint avoids brush with death - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The graphics program will remain available on the app store, Microsoft says.
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Technology
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The new Doctor Who was re-created in Microsoft Paint by user @foxymulderx
Microsoft has confirmed that it will continue to offer its graphics program Paint.
In a recent update, it had listed Paint as a feature that would be either removed or no longer developed.
Paint, renowned for its simplicity, has been part of the Windows operating system since its launch in 1985.
Microsoft suggested it would not remain on Windows 10 by default but did say it would be available for free on the Windows Store.
Its successor, Paint 3D, will be part of the Windows 10 package.
This mountain scene was shared by user Valprine on Twitter.
There had been an outpouring of support for the program on social media, following the publication of the list on 24 July.
"If there's anything we learned, it's that after 32 years, MS Paint has a lot of fans," Microsoft wrote in a blog.
"It's been amazing to see so much love for our trusty old app."
There does not appear to have been a similar reprieve for other features on the list of casualties.
These included the Outlook Express email client, now replaced by Mail.
Paddington Bear was shared with the BBC by user Foxymulderx
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40714395
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Charlie Gard parents end legal fight for 'beautiful' baby - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Letting "gorgeous" Charlie go is "the hardest thing we'll ever have to do", his parents say.
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London
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Chris Gard: "We are so sorry we could not save you"
The parents of terminally ill baby Charlie Gard have ended their legal challenge to take him to the US for experimental treatment.
A lawyer representing Chris Gard and Connie Yates told the High Court "time had run out" for the baby.
Mr Gard said it meant his "sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy" will not reach his first birthday on 4 August.
"To let our beautiful little Charlie go" is "the hardest thing we'll ever have to do", his mother said.
Charlie's parents said they made the decision because a US doctor had told them it was now too late to give Charlie nucleoside therapy.
Charlie has a rare genetic condition and would not live to see his first birthday, his father said
"We only wanted to give him a chance of life," Ms Yates told the court in a statement.
"A whole lot of time has been wasted," she added.
"We are sorry we could not save you."
Their lawyer Grant Armstrong said the parents' worst fears had been confirmed.
He told judge Mr Justice Francis US neurologist Dr Michio Hirano had said he was no longer willing to offer the baby experimental therapy after he saw the results of a new MRI scan last week.
He added Mr Gard and Ms Yates, from Bedfont, west London, now hoped to establish a foundation to ensure Charlie's voice "continues to be heard".
Several supporters of Charlie's parents' campaign gathered outside the court
In a statement outside court, Mr Gard said Charlie was an "absolute warrior" and they "could not be prouder of him."
"Charlie has had a greater impact on and touched more people in this world in his 11 months than many people do in a lifetime.
"We could not have more love and pride for our beautiful boy.
"We are now going to spend our last precious moments with our son Charlie, who unfortunately won't make his first birthday in just under two weeks' time."
They had raised £1.3m in donations to take their son abroad for treatment.
Charlie has encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He has brain damage and cannot move his arms or legs.
Some supporters shouted after hearing the news from inside the court
Katie Gollop, the lawyer representing Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) where Charlie has been treated since October, said doctors disagreed with the parents who believed MRI scans in January had shown "treatment could have been effective at that time".
"All aspects of the clinical picture and all of Charlie's observations indicated that his brain was irreversibly damaged and that [the therapy] was futile," she said.
The hospital paid tribute to the "bravery" of the decision made by Charlie's parents.
In a statement, it said: "Over the weekend, they communicated their desire to spend all the time they can with Charlie whilst working with the hospital to formulate the best possible plan for his end of life care.
"The agony, desolation and bravery of their decision command GOSH's utmost respect and humble all who work there."
Mr Justice Francis paid tribute to Charlie's parents and said no-one could comprehend their agony and no parents could have done more.
In his judgement, the judge said last week's MRI scans had shown "Charlie has no muscle at all" on parts of his body and was "beyond help".
He said Mr Gard and Ms Yates were now prepared to accept Charlie should be moved to palliative care and be allowed to die with dignity.
The judge also decried the "absurd notion which has appeared in recent days that Charlie has been a prisoner of the National Health Service", calling it "the antithesis of the truth".
"In this country children have rights independent of their parents," he said.
Occasionally there were circumstances when a hospital and the parents were unable to agree what course of action was in the best interest of the child patient, in that instance the decision is referred to an independent judge, he continued.
Charlie has been in intensive care at GOSH since October
Outside court, Charlie's Army campaigners reacted angrily and chanted, "shame on you judge" and "shame on GOSH".
Falling to the ground, one female supporter said: "He had a chance and you took it away."
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40708343
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Brexit: UK 'overwhelmingly reliant' on abattoir vets from EU - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The UK is "reliant" on EU nationals to enforce welfare and hygiene standards in abattoirs, peers say.
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UK Politics
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Up to 75% of abattoir workers are estimated to be migrants, many from the EU
The UK is "overwhelmingly reliant" on EU workers to enforce animal welfare and food hygiene standards in abattoirs, a group of peers has warned.
The Lords EU Environment Committee said it was concerned 90% of slaughterhouse vets were EU nationals and it was vital they stayed in the UK after Brexit.
Peers said there was no reason that general animal welfare standards should fall after the UK leaves the EU.
But it warned of the threat to UK firms from cheap food imports.
Guarantees over welfare standards should be written into future trade deals to protect the competitiveness of UK firms, the cross-party committee urges.
Ministers say they expect environmental and welfare standards deriving from EU membership to be maintained, as a bare minimum, after the UK leaves the EU.
But campaigners have warned they could be watered down, in some areas, as a precondition of free trade deals with the United States and other major food exporters.
On a visit to Washington on Monday, International Trade Secretary Liam Fox had to downplay reports that concerns over the lifting of a ban on US chlorinated chicken could stand in the way of a free trade agreement between the US and UK.
In its report, the committee said the UK was rightly proud of its high standards of animal welfare and that many of the laws in the area pre-dated the UK joining the European Economic Community in 1973.
But it said the "vast majority" of recent legislation in the field originated in EU law and although the UK was converting all existing EU law on to the domestic statute book, the existing framework could be affected.
"We see no reason why Brexit should diminish animal welfare standards, as long as the government is aware of the challenges ahead and acts accordingly," said Lord Teverson, the Lib Dem peer who chairs the committee.
But he added: "We heard evidence of undeniable concern that opening up the UK market to free global trade poses a number of issues. We heard overwhelming support for farm animal welfare standards to be maintained or improved. To help achieve that, we urge the government to secure the inclusion of high farm animal welfare standards in any free trade agreements it negotiates after Brexit."
Lord Krebs, the former chair of the Food Standards Agency, told the BBC that no-one was saying that US beef or chicken was unsafe but that the UK could not "have it both ways" when it came to a future trade deal.
"The prime minister has said after Brexit we will maintain high welfare standards in this country," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"On the other hand we hear Liam Fox saying we want to do a trade deal with America and other countries which would encourage cheaper imports, with probably lower welfare standards.
"So that is the question - do we want to maintain our own industry with high welfare standards or do you want to race to the bottom and import the cheapest meat wherever it comes from around the world?"
The committee said vets played a key role in ensuring animals were slaughtered humanely and animal shipments were properly certified, citing warnings from the British Veterinary Association that demand for certification was likely to increase if the remaining EU nations were regarded as third-party countries after Brexit.
Referring to BVA statistics suggesting more than 90% of official veterinarians, who provide government licensed services such as disease testing in animals and ante and post mortems in abattoirs, were non-UK EU nationals, it said:
"That is a concerning number because these are people who are working for our animal health, particularly in our abattoirs, and this has a knock-on effect for food safety and hygiene".
The BVA said official veterinarians, formerly known as local veterinary inspectors, had unique qualifications and were "crucial for the protection of the UK consumer, certifying and supervising the import and export of animals and animal products to third countries".
The committee said it had been told by the National Farmers Union that vets also undertook many farm inspection and enforcement roles and the union was seeking reassurances that post-Brexit immigration controls would not limit access to experienced staff.
The government has said all EU nationals living and working in the UK for five years will be entitled to apply for settled status, enjoying broadly the same rights as now, while more recent arrivals will also be guaranteed residency rights as long as they arrived before an as yet unspecified cut-off point.
In response to the Lords report, the Department for the Environment said: "Leaving the EU provides us with an opportunity to develop gold standard policies on animal welfare.
"We are determined to get a good Brexit deal for Britain, and we have been absolutely clear we will maintain our world-leading animal welfare standards," a spokesman added.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40703369
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The city that makes the most expensive boats in the world - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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How Italian seaside city Viareggio became a hub for the superyacht manufacturing industry.
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Business
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. When it comes to superyachts, the bigger the better
Wandering along the beach in Italy's Viareggio you could be forgiven for thinking it's simply a holiday resort.
Yet the umbrella-lined, sandy beaches dotted with tourists mask another role, one at the heart of the shipping industry.
This unassuming seaside city is where some of the world's largest and most exclusive vessels are made.
Its speciality is the superyacht. These giant crewed vessels start at about the length of an average swimming pool - 24-metres. But the biggest can stretch to five or more times this.
It's a world that belongs to only the very wealthiest of the wealthy - to buy a superyacht you have to be super rich.
Just 370 superyachts were sold last year around the globe, yet collectively these sales were worth a staggering 3.4bn euros (£3bn; $4bn).
The most expensive superyacht sold so far this year cost 155m euros, according to Boat International which collates the industry data.
Viareggio is where about a fifth of these gigantic elite boats are made. It's the "cradle of shipbuilding" is how the city's mayor Giorgio del Ghingaro sums it up.
Tourism isn't the only big industry in Viareggio
In fact, the town's involvement in the industry goes back almost 200 years to 1819 when the first dock was built. Viareggio started to build large, strong wooden ships to transport the marble from the region's famous quarries. This laid the foundations for what would eventually become a major international shipping industry with a history of carpentry and craftsmanship.
The growing popularity of the superyacht has meant Viareggio has evolved again, shifting from making the wooden boats it was once famous for to constructing these giant metal and fibreglass vessels.
Vincenzo Poerio, the chief executive of shipbuilding firm Benetti, which is headquartered in Viareggio, believes the region's artistic roots have helped to drive its success in the industry.
Tuscan cities such as Lucca, Pisa, Siena and Florence are renowned for their craftmanship in marble, wood, leather and architecture. And people in the market for buying a superyacht expect everything - the interior as well as the exterior - to look perfect.
A superyacht is "probably the most expensive toy in the world," says Benetti boss Vincenzo Poerio
Of course you need more than artistic flair to build a superyacht. For such large and expensive projects, engineering skills are crucial as are project management expertise to ensure the boat is built on time and on budget.
But Mr Poerio says the most important attribute to be successful in this industry is people skills to enable them to deal with the often "challenging" demands of the super rich.
Maintaining good relations matter because it's a personal transaction, not a business one, he says:
"At the end of the day, you are building a big toy, probably the most expensive toy in the world."
In contrast to similar industries such as luxury cars or private aircraft, it's much harder to build these vessels in a standardised way.
"In our case most of the time we start from scratch. So the client is not buying a product, he's building a product which makes a huge difference… Most of the time it's not easy to manage these requests," says Mr Poerio.
When it comes to superyachts, the interior is as important as the exterior
This approach is now starting to shift, with some shipbuilders including Benetti and Perini Navi, building smaller superyachts without first receiving an order.
For their wealthy customers, used to getting things when they want them, an instantly-available boat is a big attraction.
But for the firms investing millions when they don't yet know if they'll be able to find a customer it is a risky strategy.
Yet Burak Akgul, a managing director at shipbuilder Perini Navi, says he's not worried.
"We are an indulgence. There's always someone who's ready to indulge, it's just a matter of whether or not we manage to get hold of them," he jokes.
In fact, he says, the brand Perini has become a sort of status symbol, marking a certain level of achievement.
"We started seeing people expressing themselves as having reached the point where they now need to have their Perini.
"They didn't know what they wanted yet, but they had this feeling that they had come to the point of their personal success that time had come for them to build a Perini this was something they had to add to their stable," he says.
One other advantage for Viareggio is that it is already well equipped to cope with the vagaries of the superyacht industry, which because it is so small and specialised can see demand fluctuate wildly depending on the wider economy.
The skills required to build a superyacht are similar to those for a military boat with both of similar sizes.
Massimo Perotti, owner of ship builder San Lorenzo, says this is a useful balance, with demand for pleasure yachts naturally reducing when military vessels are required and vice versa.
Nonetheless, the extreme wealth of their clientele means they're also more cushioned from the impact of world events. Even in the financial crisis, San Lorenzo managed to expand, selling about 20 yachts, partly by targeting new markets in Russia, South America, Brazil and India.
The crisis did, however, mark a shift in their customer base. Instead of getting people who wanted a superyacht to show how rich and powerful they were he says, most customers are now genuinely interested in boating.
Yet even with a flow of wealthy customers ready to indulge, the Italian industry is facing competition from other rivals within Europe and even China. Lower labour costs and raw materials mean these countries are able to produce a cheaper boat.
"If you want a piece of art you go to Italy," says San Lorenzo's Massimo Perotti
But Benetti's Mr Poerio says that for the "very, very, very rich people" they cater for, price isn't what matters.
When people are spending millions and millions of euros "the brand has to mean something," he says.
He believes things like the customer relationships and service they offer, as well as the guarantee of a certain level of quality, means they should be able to keep customers from going elsewhere.
San Lorenzo's Mr Perotti agrees: "If you buy a superyacht it's for yourself. You like technology, design, luxury; you know, it's not cheap and you are not looking to to have it at the lowest cost."
In the end, it comes back to what Viareggio has always been renowned for - artistic flair.
"The characteristic of the Italians is individualism and creativity. Maybe you buy a German car because the Germans are better in organisation. But if you want to buy a piece of art you probably go to Italy."
This feature is based on interviews by series producer Neil Koenig, for the BBC's Life of Luxury series.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40681345
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Germany's big businesses' Brexit worries - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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How are Germany's economic giants viewing the UK's negotiations to leave the EU?
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Europe
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It must be serious. They've deployed the Royals.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have been on tour in Germany with a very specific purpose: to reassure the country that Brexit doesn't mean the break-up of a beautiful relationship.
Prince William, after speaking a few words in German, told guests at a British embassy garden party: "This relationship between UK and Germany really matters, it will continue despite Britain's recent decision to leave the European Union. I am confident we will remain the firmest of friends."
But since the British election, German politicians are more troubled than ever about Brexit. The German council for foreign relations' director, Daniela Schwarzer, told me: "Policymakers in Berlin are surprised and worried at the degree of confusion in London, the lack of clarity as to the strategy the UK wants to follow.
"There is a lot surprise about how the negotiations are being handled and the somewhat incoherent messages which come out of London."
Of course, Germany is just one country in the European Union - but it is first among equals, its chancellor by far the most senior politician, with a new and determined ally in President Macron, who's refreshed the Franco-German alliance.
Even before Brexit became a reality, there's been an argument, almost an assumption, that German industry would put pressure on German politicians to argue for a good deal for the UK - access to the European market without having to abide by the rules.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge recently toured Germany
So far, Mrs Merkel has been adamant: no cherry picking. Will German industry push her to change her mind?
I visited the Trumpf company in Stuttgart, a concern with a turnover of 3bn euros (£2.7bn) a year that makes sheet metal, laser cutters and machine tools. It employs 4,000 people in Germany and another 8,000 globally: in the USA, China, Japan, South Korea - and in Luton, Southampton and Rugby.
The company's Heidi Maier tells me orders from the UK are up because people have got used to the idea of Brexit.
"Despite political insecurities and decisions we don't like and we don't back, our business is doing very well," she says.
We stand in front of the True Punch 5000. The machine is swift and certain, precise and elegant, all the qualities that make Germans so proud of their engineering prowess.
The exact opposite of these qualities - slowness and uncertainty - is what worries German industry about Brexit.
I ask Ms Maier what they want Mrs Merkel to push for. "What would help is decisions, and fast decisions," she says.
"As soon as we know the new rules, we can go ahead. We are actually preparing for tariffs, which is the implication [of what the British government is saying], which would worsen our business. The goods we produce in Great Britain would become more expensive due to the tariffs, and we don't know how our customers would react to that."
Most German businesses tend to lobby government through powerful trade associations. And one industry has more horsepower than any other.
Germany's glittering car industry is an industrial giant with immense political clout and a 400bn euro turnover, employing 800,000 people. And the relationship with the UK is very important. One in seven cars exported from Germany goes to the UK, its single biggest market.
The Trumpf machine is just one example of German high-tech engineering
Ever since Brexit was a speck on the horizon, enthusiasts for leaving have argued the mighty German auto industry wouldn't allow politicians to punish Britain, a point I put to Matthias Wissman, the president of the VDA, the German automotive industry association.
"What we want is to keep the European Union of the 27 together," he says. "That is the first priority. Second priority is to have a trade area with the UK with no tariff barriers, no non-tariff barriers. That is possible if the UK understands what the preconditions are.
"We want a good deal for Britain, but the best deal for Britain would be to stay in the customs union. Anything else would be worse for both sides. The best thing would be to stay in the internal market, like Norway."
He accused pro-Brexiteers of making "totally unrealistic" promises. "I see a lot which is astonishing for a friend of Great Britain. I miss the traditional British pragmatism. We would like to have it in the future, but I see more and more ideological points of view which make pragmatism very difficult and unfortunately in both parties, Conservative and Labour."
The UK is the German auto industry's biggest export market
When I put to him Liam Fox's view that a trade deal with the EU could be "one of the easiest in human history", he laughs and says it would take years and years but "time is running out".
"You need a transition period. And if you want an easy solution, stay in the customs union and the internal market.
"A transition period would also be very pragmatic. We hope that on the British side that gets deeper and deeper into the intellectual capabilities of those who decide."
This is not just the view of one man, or one industry. There seems to be a consensus among the industrial powerbrokers.
Klaus Deutsch of the federation of German industry, the BDI, makes it clear they did not want Brexit in the first place and would like the UK to stay in the single market and observe all the rules.
But that's not the government's intention, so what follows?
"We would favour a comprehensive agreement. But the most important thing is legal certainty in the period from A to B. If you don't have a transition period of many years, then there will be a huge disruption to all sorts of businesses.
"The concern of business is unless you get a clear cut and legally safe agreement, you can't sell pharmaceuticals, or cars or what have you, across the Channel, you have to stop business, divest, change business models."
Will Germany prioritise EU unity over its economic relationship with the UK?
He makes it clear only the British government can decide what it wants, but what about the idea they'll push Mrs Merkel to soften her approach?
"That's completely unlikely," Mr Deutsch says. "The importance of the European Union for German corporates is even higher than the importance of a bilateral relationship with the United Kingdom. So, the priority of safeguarding… the unity of the European Union is much more important than one economic relationship. There are a lot of illusions - it won't happen."
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend programme, Owen Paterson, the former cabinet minister, who recently visited Germany, told me he had felt a "sense of denial" in the country over Brexit.
"It is hugely in everyone's interest that we maintain reciprocal free trade and as we have absolute conformity of standards, everyone should get their head round that," he told me.
"Whereas [the Germans] are still thinking entirely in terms of remaining in the current institutions and that's clearly what we are not going to do.
"We're not going to stay in the single market. We are not going to stay in the customs union. We're certainly not going to stay under the remit of the European Court of Justice. I found that that was something they had not really got their heads round."
And my overriding impression of the view of the big beasts of Germany industry?
Frustration that they don't know where the British government wants to head and a strong sense that any outcome will be worse than what exists.
But also, a total rejection of the idea that the economic relationship with the UK outweighs the German interest in European unity.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40683091
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Ulster's Jackson and Olding face rape prosecution - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Both Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding deny all allegations against them.
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Northern Ireland
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Both fly-half Paddy Jackson and centre Stuart Olding deny the allegations
Two Ulster rugby stars are among four men to be prosecuted for offences relating to allegations of rape, the BBC understands.
Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were arrested in June 2016 with two other men, and questioned about allegations of a sexual assault in south Belfast.
The PPS confirmed a decision has been taken to prosecute four men in relation to allegations of rape.
Both Mr Jackson, 25, and Mr Olding, 24, deny the allegations.
The Public Prosecution Service said: "Following a careful review of all of the available evidence, in accordance with our Code for Prosecutors, it has been decided that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute four individuals."
Solicitors representing Mr Jackson and Mr Olding confirmed their clients are to be prosecuted for alleged rape.
Another man is to be charged with a sexual offence and a fourth man is to be charged with intent to pervert the course of justice.
Solicitor Joe Rice, representing Stuart Olding said: "I would like to point out that my client has fully co-operated with the investigation and is not on any bail conditions and is of previous good character.
"He should be allowed to uphold his right to the presumption of innocence and rejects any allegation of wrong-doing and is confident his name will be cleared through the courts."
In a similar statement, Paddy Jackson's solicitor Kevin Winters said: "He rejects the allegations completely and we're very disappointed at the PPS decision to prosecute on these particular facts."
"We say there is no basis for the decision to prosecute and we are confident that our client will be cleared of any charge."
The PPS statement added: "As the criminal proceedings against these individuals have commenced and each has a right to a fair trial, it is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice proceedings."
All four men are due to appear in court next month.
The Irish Rugby Football Union and Ulster Rugby said the players have agreed that they be relieved of their duties and obligations until the conclusion of the legal process, to allow them time to address the matter fully.
Mr Jackson and Mr Olding have been involved in legal proceedings against the BBC in relation to the reporting of their arrests.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-40719803
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Newspaper headlines: 'Sleep tight our little warrior' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Terminally ill baby Charlie Gard dominates the front pages, as his parents end their legal battle to take him to the US for further treatment.
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The Papers
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For many papers, the main story is the tragic decision of the parents of Charlie Gard to end his life support.
"Sleep tight our beautiful little boy," says the Daily Mail.
For the i newspaper, it is: "Goodbye, our little warrior."
"We're so sorry we couldn't save you," is the headline in the Sun.
"Time's run out for our brave warrior," is the take of the Daily Mirror.
The papers are full of praise for the bravery of Chris Gard and Connie Yates.
The Sun believes they "fought with limitless love and awe-inspiring determination".
The Mirror says they acted with "great dignity".
For the Daily Telegraph, their acceptance "that the time has come to let Charlie go" is a "courageous and heartbreaking decision. It is the right one".
The Mail says the question now is whether 11-month-old Charlie will be allowed to go home to die, an issue which has yet to be settled.
It says the High Court judge could be asked to make another ruling on that matter if talks between the parents and Great Ormond Street Hospital fail to resolve it.
The Guardian leads with the Bank of England's warning about rising levels of personal debt - and its threat of "fresh action against reckless lending".
The paper points out that the intervention comes a fortnight before the 10th anniversary of the beginnings of the financial crisis - and describes it as a "ratcheting up of Threadneedle Street's rhetoric" about the possibility of a repeat of the crash that devastated the economy in 2007.
A special report in the i newspaper suggests the identities of 11 million British people are being traded on the dark web.
Vast amounts of confidential data - including online passwords - are being offered for sale to criminals.
It says particular areas are being targeted, with Cardiff, Leicester and Nottingham featuring prominently.
The fraudsters then take months to build a full profile of each victim, with the aim of obtaining their banking details.
The Daily Star reports that Ian Brady's body is still lying in a mortuary, two months after the Moors Murderer's death.
The paper says the bodies of Brady and the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi have been "abandoned" in the secret location, because undertakers are unwilling to handle their funeral arrangements.
The Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales is said by the Times to have been accused of abusing his position because his force stopped sending officers to deal with protesters at a fracking site in Lancashire after he complained.
Arfon Jones, who formerly campaigned against fracking, said his opposition was only one factor in the decision.
North Wales Police insisted it was down to the "high demands" on the force.
The Sun reveals how a golf fan helped Jordan Spieth win The Open - when the player's ball bounced off his head and avoided landing in the long grass at the 13th hole.
A fellow spectator tells the paper Spieth shook the man's hand and apologised.
It says the sportsman admitted later that he "felt like he'd got away with murder".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-40712543
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Will Syria's war criminals be let off the hook? - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Why the collection of evidence about the conflict may not result in prosecutions.
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Middle East
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For six years, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria has been painstakingly gathering information about possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict.
The investigators have produced 13 reports, the evidence in each is harrowing. Villages destroyed, crops burnt, wells poisoned, torture, rape, starvation sieges, mass bombing of civilians, and what only a decade ago might have been unthinkable - chemical weapons.
There is no doubt that war crimes have been committed by all sides, the commission says. In each report there is a demand for "accountability" - that no-one should be allowed to commit such horrific acts and get away with it.
"This would be incredible, a scandal," says commission member Carla Del Ponte, who describes the violations in Syria as by far the worst she has ever come across. "But nothing happens, only words, words, and more words."
Ms Del Ponte, as a former prosecutor at the tribunal for Yugoslavia, and the woman who put Slobodan Milosevic in the dock, knows how to bring war criminals to book.
Carla Del Ponte says the violations of international law in the Syrian conflict are the worst she has encountered
While the Syria commission has no power to prosecute, what it does have is a vast amount of evidence, and a confidential list of names, thought to include figures at the very top of the Syrian government and military.
To bring those individuals (including, Ms Del Ponte thinks, President Assad) to court, the UN Security Council would have to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court. And throughout the Syria conflict, the Security Council has been divided, with Russia and China in particular resisting what they regard as unnecessary interference in Syria's problems.
Now, though, the United Nations, under new Secretary General Antonio Guterres, appears to be flexing its muscles.
A new body has been set up, called, rather dryly, the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism or IIIM, to sift the evidence, build cases, and pass them to any court that could have jurisdiction. Some European countries are already opening cases.
At its head is an experienced French judge, Catherine Marchi-Uhel, who has worked on the tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and the Extraordinary Courts of Cambodia, which prosecuted the Khmer Rouge.
"This gives me hope that something is moving," says Alain Werner, director of Civitas Maxima, a Swiss organisation that works to ensure justice for victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"I didn't even think this body would be set up… this is proof [the UN] is serious."
Mr Werner's own organisation has already built cases against suspected war criminals from Sierra Leone and Liberia, and his work with victims has shown him, he says, that "the eagerness for justice is immense".
One of his colleagues, Antonya Tioulong, knows personally just how important this can be. Her sister and brother-in-law were tortured and murdered in Phnom Penh's notorious S-21 detention centre during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
In 1995, Srebrenica was the scene of the worst massacre of the Bosnian war
In the 1990s, almost two decades after her sister's death, Antonya was able to learn what had happened to her, and she tried to bring a case in the French courts against the Khmer Rouge officers who had run S-21. It was rejected.
"I felt powerless. There was no sign, either, of an international tribunal. I wondered, 'Were the two million victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide so unimportant in the eyes of the world that the criminals did not need to be judged?'"
Antonya had to wait until 2008, when an international tribunal was finally set up. The men who murdered her sister were at last convicted.
She was comforted not just by the verdict, but by the fact that the tribunal was public.
"Thousands of people came from all over the world to attend the hearings in person, showing their desire to understand what happened."
But many thousands of victims still wait. In the Swiss capital, Berne, the Red Cross Centre for Victims of Torture and War had more than 4,000 consultations in 2016 alone.
"Almost the most important thing is that they have the space and time to talk," says psychologist Carola Smolenski. "We have patients from former Yugoslavia who still suffer chronically from their experiences."
For many of these patients, however, there may never be a public tribunal where perpetrators are convicted, and the suffering of their victims formally recognised in a court of law.
Instead, the Red Cross Centre has included a form of "validation" process as part of the therapy.
Many Syrians, millions of whom are in refugee camps, still await news of loved ones
"We will prepare [together with the patient] a detailed chronological report," says Carola Smolenski. "We recognise the experience together, and we sign it as witnesses."
"It is important that they can say, 'That is my story, and it is being taken seriously.'"
For the millions of Syrians waiting in refugee camps, or trapped in besieged cities, peace cannot come soon enough. But millions of Syrians, too, are waiting to know the fate of loved ones who disappeared into Syria's prisons, or vanished in the heat of battle.
In Geneva, the UN peace process is inching along. In the talks about Syria in the Kazakh capital, Astana, the Russians, Turks, and Iranians are working to negotiate "de-escalation zones" to reduce the violence.
But in neither the Geneva process nor Astana is there much talk of accountability for the undoubtedly massive number of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is unclear whether the newly formed IIIM has a role in the peace process at all.
Could this be because leaders, on all sides of Syria's conflict, might not be motivated to reach a peace deal if they thought a war crimes trial would be their reward?
"You might have put your finger on it," says one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The idea that achieving peace, or at least an absence of war, should take priority over justice is often advanced during tricky diplomatic negotiations.
Some also suggest that war crimes tribunals can sow the seeds of future discord, particularly if victims are from one ethnic group and perpetrators from another.
The Nuremburg war trials resulted in many convictions but little remorse, says UN human rights commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu famously did not want a tribunal for South Africa, pushing instead for a truth and reconciliation process, in which the accused would acknowledge their crimes but also be forgiven by their victims.
The UN's human rights commissioner, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, agrees that creating sustainable peace is a complex process, but insists that the authors of Syria's suffering must be formally prosecuted.
"In Syria, there will never be peace if you don't put the victims at the centre of your effort," he says.
"You can have the most finely crafted agreement, but if victims don't feel justice, then it is worthless, a pointless exercise. There has to be an accounting, the central authors must be brought to book."
Nevertheless, he sees prosecutions as only part of the process.
"At a fundamental level, we will never have permanent peace if we don't deal with unresolved issues."
This means, he says, all sides in a conflict recognising their conduct, and showing "contrition".
And there, Mr Hussein says, society must play its role.
During the German trials after World War Two, he points out, there were 7,000 convictions, but few of those convicted showed any remorse.
The push for contrition and remorse came later, through work by German historians, school teachers, and post-War politicians.
Alain Werner agrees that, in view of the scale of the atrocities in Syria, "it is very difficult to think there will be no justice".
But, he adds, because the number of cases is "staggering", justice is unlikely to be swift. "Syria could take 40 years… even 100 years to investigate."
• None How virtual reality could help prosecute Nazi war criminals
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40685359
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Celine Dookhran killing: Tributes paid to 'beautiful girl' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Celine Dookhran, of Indian Muslim heritage, was allegedly killed over a relationship with an Arab Muslim.
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London
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A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Celine Dookhran's death was a neck wound
Tributes have been paid to a 20-year-old woman who was allegedly kidnapped and raped before being killed.
Celine Dookhran's body was found at an address in Coombe Lane West, in Kingston Upon Thames, on Wednesday.
Prosecutors allege Mujahid Arshid, 33, murdered the teenager - who was of Indian Muslim heritage - for being in a relationship with an Arab Muslim.
One user on Facebook said: "RIP Celine. Such a beautiful, intelligent soul."
Ms Dookhran, who was born in Wandsworth and grew up in south London, had a passion for make-up and offered cosmetic advice to her followers on social media.
Her social media messages included posts about religious holidays and fasting during Ramadan.
The last tweet, posted eight days before her death, said "Alhamdulillah [praise God] for everything that's all I can say".
Following the news of her death, one of her Twitter followers said: "Innalillahe wainna ilaye rajeeon ["We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return."]
"RIP Celine, You did not deserve what has happened, May Allah grant you a place in Paradise. Inshallah."
While another user posted: "RIP Celine, you were very beautiful and you will never be forgotten."
Ms Dookhran had a passion for make-up and offered cosmetic advice to her Twitter followers
Mr Arshid is also accused of the kidnap, rape and attempted murder of a woman in her 20s.
The second woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had earlier been treated for stab or slash wounds at a south London hospital.
Vincent Tappu, 28, from Acton, west London, is also charged with kidnapping both women.
A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Ms Dookhran's death was a neck wound.
Police found the body of the 20-year-old at a property in Kingston Upon Thames
The men have been remanded in custody.
Mr Arshid, of no fixed address, is scheduled to appear at the Old Bailey on 26 July.
Both defendants will appear at the same court on 21 August.
Update 26 July 2017: The age of Celine Dookhran has been changed following new information from the Metropolitan Police.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40716957
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Switzerland chainsaw attack: Suspect arrested in Thalwil - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Police arrest a man suspected of a chainsaw rampage that left five injured, after a two-day manhunt.
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Europe
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A new image of suspect Franz Wrousis was issued by police on Tuesday
A man who sparked one of the biggest manhunts in Swiss history after allegedly attacking people with a chainsaw has been arrested, police say.
Franz Wrousis, 50, was arrested in Thalwil, a town about 60km (37 miles) from Schaffhausen, the border town where the incident took place.
Mr Wrousis, who is said to have lived in the nearby woods, allegedly attacked two people in an insurance office.
More than 100 Swiss and German officers were involved in the search.
On Tuesday afternoon, after more than 24 hours on the run, Swiss police admitted they had no idea where Mr Wrousis had gone, and could have potentially crossed into Germany,
A helicopter and dogs were used to scour the area for any trace of the alleged suspect, who has two previous convictions for weapons offences.
Police eventually found him in Thalwil, just south of Zurich. No further details were available surrounding the arrest, but local media reported the police were due to hold a press conference early on Wednesday.
Monday's attack unfolded shortly after 10:30 (08:30 GMT), when two workers were attacked and wounded by a chainsaw at the CSS insurance office. One was badly hurt and needed surgery in hospital.
Two other people were treated for shock, while a third was slightly hurt during the ensuing police operation.
Police said Mr Wrousis had been a customer of the firm.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40723179
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Electric Mini to be built in Oxford - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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A fully electric version of the Mini is to be built at the Cowley plant in Oxford, BMW says.
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Business
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The electric vehicle will be based on the 3-door hatchback model
A fully electric version of the Mini will be built at the Cowley plant in Oxford, BMW has said.
The carmaker said the model would go into production in 2019, with Oxford the main "production location" for the Mini three-door model.
However, the electric motor will be built in Germany before being shipped to Cowley for assembly.
BMW said it had "neither sought nor received" any reassurances from the UK on post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Last year, the government faced questions about the "support and assurances" given to Nissan before the company announced that new versions of its Qashqai and X-Trail would be made in the UK.
And there have been reports that Toyota agreed to invest in the UK after receiving a letter reassuring the Japanese carmaker over post-Brexit arrangements.
About 360,000 Minis are made each year, with more than 60% of them built at Oxford. But BMW has built up an alternative manufacturing base in the Netherlands amid concerns about Britain's suitability as an export hub after Brexit.
BMW has warned about the damage of Brexit uncertainty, and in May chief executive Harald Krueger said the company had to remain "flexible" about production facilities.
UK Business Secretary Greg Clark hailed BMW's announcement as a "vote of confidence" in government plans to make Britain "the go-to place in the world for the next generation of vehicles". On Monday, he set out plans to invest in development of battery technology in the UK.
Mr Clark met BMW's head of sales and marketing, Ian Robertson, at the company's headquarters in Munich in January and March this year. The two also held meetings at Westminster in March and June.
David Bailey, professor of industry at Aston University, said the true test of the global car industry's desire to invest in the UK would come next year: "I don't think it [BMW's decision] tells us much about Brexit and the form of trade barriers we may face in the future.
"The big decisions will be about future models [which would have redesigned bodies], both at Mini and at companies like Vauxhall when they announce their new models in the next couple of years."
BMW says the economic case for building the electric mini in Oxford is compelling, and it's easy to see why.
This is not a brand new car, redesigned from the ground up. It's a Mini, a 3-door hatchback, which will in many ways be identical to the cars already being built at the Cowley plant.
The electric bit - the drivetrain, which includes the motor, gearbox and battery pack - will be assembled in Germany, and fixed to the rest of the car in the factory.
So it makes sense to build this model at the same factory as the majority of existing Mini production. There is no need for a new factory or production line, meaning the size of the investment will be relatively small by auto-industry standards - in "the tens of millions", BMW says.
There is a potential spanner in the works - the new car is due to go into production in 2019, months after the UK leaves the EU.
With drivetrains being imported into the UK and many completed cars exported back to Europe, there's a risk costs could rise sharply if tariffs are introduced on cross-channel trade.
But the company insists it can only make decisions based on the current economic realities. There has been no "special deal" done with the British government, it says - and nor has it asked for one.
The German carmaker said the Mini announcement was part of a plan for electrified vehicles to account for between 15-25% of its sales by 2025.
The electric Mini will be based on the company's 3-door hatchback model. However, BMW has yet to release pictures of a prototype vehicle.
BMW employs about 18,000 staff in the UK, including the Mini plant at Cowley, the Rolls-Royce factory in Sussex and at other sites in Birmingham and Swindon.
Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke said the announcement was a "big vote of confidence" in BMW's UK workforce. He told the BBC that there had been "patient discussions behind the scenes" to secure the electric Mini.
Although there was no news about extra jobs, Mr Burke said the new Mini would "certainly underpin existing employment".
BMW currently makes electric motors and batteries for all of its electric cars at two factories in Germany, at Dingolfing and Landshut.
Electric car development has been boosted by a series of announcements in recent months. The first phase of a £246m investment by the UK government into battery technology was launched on Monday.
Earlier this month, Volvo became the first traditional car maker to commit to including an electric motor in all of its new models from 2019.
US firm Tesla's first mass-market electric car, the Model 3, is expected to be unveiled on Friday at a handover party for 30 customers, before production is ramped up.
And the first vehicle manufacturing facility to be built in Britain for more than a decade opened in Ansty, Coventry, in March to produce a new electric London black taxi.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40718892
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Trump: UK-US trade deal could be 'big and exciting' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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The US President also takes a swipe at the EU's "very protectionist" stance towards his country.
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UK Politics
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Donald Trump has said he is working on a "major trade deal" with the UK.
The US President tweeted that a bilateral trade agreement with the UK after it leaves the EU in 2019 could be "very big and exciting" for jobs.
Mr Trump, who backed Brexit, also took a swipe at the EU accusing it of a "very protectionist" stance to the US.
The US President, whose officials are meeting British counterparts this week, has been accused of protectionist rhetoric by his political opponents.
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The UK's International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is currently in Washington discussing the potential for a UK-US trade deal after the UK's withdrawal from the EU in March 2019. No deal can be signed until after then.
Mr Trump has said he would like to see a speedy deal although free trade agreements typically take many years to conclude and any agreement, which will have to be approved by Congress, is likely to involve hard negotiations over tariff and non tariff barriers in areas such as agriculture and automotive.
On Monday, Mr Fox published details of commercial ties between the UK and every congressional district in the US as a working party of officials met to discuss a future trade deal for the first time. Two-way trade between the two countries already totals £150bn.
Mr Fox is also discussing other issues, including the continuation of existing trade and investment accords, with trade secretary Wilbur Ross and the US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer.
At a breakfast meeting for members of the House of Representatives, Mr Fox said his twin objectives were to provide certainty for foreign investors ahead of Brexit and to expand the volume and value of trade with the US.
"The EU itself estimates that 90% of global growth in the next decade will come from outside Europe, and I believe as the head of an international economic department that this is an exciting opportunity for the UK to work even more closely with our largest single trading partner the US," he said.
Sir Vince Cable, the new leader of the UK parliament's fourth largest party, the Liberal Democrats, said a US-UK trade deal could bring significant benefits - but he called on the government to guarantee parliament would get a vote on it first.
"Liam Fox and Boris Johnson must not be able to stitch up trade deals abroad and impose them on the country," he said.
"It is parliament, not Liam Fox, that should be the final arbiter on whether to sacrifice our standards to strike a deal with Trump."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40716317
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Sea level fears as Greenland darkens - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Scientists worry that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could accelerate and raise sea levels more than expected.
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Science & Environment
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The Greenland ice sheet covers an area about seven times the size of the UK
Scientists are "very worried" that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could accelerate and raise sea levels more than expected.
They say warmer conditions are encouraging algae to grow and darken the surface.
Dark ice absorbs more solar radiation than clean white ice so warms up and melts more rapidly.
Currently the Greenland ice sheet is adding up to 1mm a year to the rise in the global average level of the oceans.
It is the largest mass of ice in the northern hemisphere covering an area about seven times the size of the United Kingdom and reaching up to 3km (2 miles) in thickness.
This means that the average sea level would rise around the world by about seven metres, more than 20ft, if it all melted.
That is why Greenland, though remote, is a focus of research which has direct relevance to major coastal cities as far apart as Miami, London and Shanghai and low-lying areas in Bangladesh and parts of Britain.
Algae were first observed on the Greenland ice sheet more than a century ago but until recently its potential impact was ignored. Only in the last few years have researchers started to explore how the microscopically small plants could affect future melting.
A five-year UK research project known as Black and Bloom is under way to investigate the different species of algae and how they might spread, and then to use this knowledge to improve computer projections of future sea level rise.
The possibility of biologically inspired melting was not included in the estimates for sea level rise published by the UN's climate panel, the IPCC, in its latest report in 2013.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "Like stepping onto the Moon": Life on the ice
That study said the worst-case scenario was a rise of 98cm by the end of the century.
One concern now is that rising temperatures will allow algae to flourish not only on the slopes of the narrow margins of the ice-sheet but also on the flat areas in the far larger interior where melting could happen on a much bigger scale.
We joined the latest phase of research in which scientists set up camp on the ice-sheet to gather accurate measurements of the "albedo" or the amount of solar radiation reflected by the surface.
White snow reflects up to 90% of solar radiation while dark patches of algae will only reflect about 35% or even as little as 1% in the blackest spots.
When we flew by helicopter onto the ice sheet, the rolling landscape seemed surprisingly grey - my first impression was that it looked dirty.
Scientists are investigating the different species of algae and how they might spread
Much of the surface was covered with what looked like patches of soot and it was pockmarked with countless holes at the bottom of which were pitch-black layers of a mix of algae, bacteria and minerals known as cryoconite.
Prof Martyn Tranter of Bristol University, who is leading the project, told me:
"People are very worried about the possibility that the ice sheet might be melting faster and faster in the future.
"We suspect that in a warming climate these dark algae will grow over larger and larger parts of the Greenland ice sheet and it might well be that they will cause more melting and an acceleration of sea level rise.
"Our project is trying to understand just how much melting might occur."
Over the last 20 years, Greenland has been losing more ice than it gains through snowfall in winter - a change in a natural balance that normally keeps the ice-sheet stable.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. David Shukman explains how scientists live on an ice sheet - and how you go to toilet
Biological darkening has not been built into scientists' climate projections
And one of the project scientists, Dr Andrew Tedstone, a glaciologist and also of Bristol University, said that over much of the same period, images from the MODIS satellite showed a darkening trend with the years of greatest dark producing most meltwater.
He said: "We still don't think we've reached a point where we've seen the maximum darkness that we're going to see in this area so the fieldwork we're doing is to try to find out in a warming climate 'do we think the area is going to get any darker than we've already seen in the last 15 years?'"
Earlier research had found that the ice sheet is covered with a range of contaminants carried on the winds including dust and soot from as far away as Canadian prairie fires and the industrial heartlands of China, America and Europe.
But studies over the past five years have shown that the majority of the dark material may be biological with different kinds of algae turning the ice black, brown, green and even mauve.
"This is a living landscape," according to Dr Joe Cook, a glacial microbiologist at Sheffield University.
"This is an extremely difficult place for anything to live but, as we look around us, all this darkness we can see on the ice surface is living - algae, microbes, living and reproducing in the ice sheet and changing its colour."
Ice retreat does not have to be total to have a damaging impact
"We know they're very widespread and we know that they're very dark and we know that that's accelerating melt but that's not something that's built into any of our climate projections - and that's something that needs to change."
The final phase of the Black and Bloom project involves weaving the new factor of biological darkening into climate models to come up with revised estimates for future sea level rise.
And, as Dr Cook explained, the retreat of the Greenland ice sheet does not need to be total to have a widespread and damaging impact.
"When we say the ice sheet is melting faster, no one saying it's all going to melt in next decade or the next 100 years or even the next 1,000 years but it doesn't all have to melt for more people to be in danger - only a small amount has to melt to threaten millions in coastal communities around world."
Meanwhile, another factor that may be driving the melting has been identified by an Austrian member of the team, Stefan Hofer, a PhD student at Bristol.
In a paper recently published in Science Advances, he analysed satellite imagery and found that over the past 20 years there has been a 15% decrease in cloud cover over Greenland in the summer months.
"It was definitely a 'wow' moment," he told me.
Although temperature is an obvious driver of melting, the paper estimated that two-thirds of additional melting, above the long-term average, was attributable to clearer skies.
What is not known is how this might affect the algae. Their darker pigments are believed to be a protection from ultra violet light - so more sunshine might encourage that process of darkening or prove to be damaging to them.
The Black and Bloom project, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc), aims to publish its new projections for sea level rise in two years' time.
Follow David on Twitter. and Join him for a live Facebook chat at 15:30 with Arctic explorer Pen Hadow ahead of his mission to sail to the North Pole.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40686984
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Richard Dawkins' Berkeley event cancelled for 'Islamophobia' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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A California radio station accuses the celebrated biologist of "abusive speech against Islam".
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US & Canada
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Dawkins has previously written: "Islam is the greatest force for evil in the world today"
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has denied Islamophobia after a US radio station cancelled his forthcoming speech.
The best-selling author had been due to address an event hosted by KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California, in August.
Organisers accused him of "abusive speech against Islam" when scrapping his appearance, an allegation he denied.
He called on the station to review his past remarks and apologise.
In a letter to ticket-holders, the publicly funded radio station wrote: "We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn't know he had offended and hurt - in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people."
The station, which is not affiliated with the University of California, said in a letter - which Mr Dawkins published online - that it does not support "hurtful" or "abusive speech".
It also apologised "for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier".
Local media report that Bay Area residents had brought attention to statements made by the author of the anti-religion book The God Delusion, including a 2013 tweet saying "Islam is the greatest force for evil in the world today".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. 'It gets lonely': Being conservative on a liberal campus
In an open letter to organisers, Professor Dawkins wrote that he "never used abusive speech against Islam".
He said harsh statements he has made in the past have been directed at "IslamISM" - apparently referring to those who use the religion for political objectives - and not adherents of the faith.
"I have criticised the appalling misogyny and homophobia of Islam, I have criticised the murdering of apostates for no crime other than their disbelief," Professor Dawkins writes.
He also pointed out that he has been a "frequent critic of Christianity but have never been de-platformed for that".
He describes listening to KPFA "almost every day" during the two years he lived in Berkeley, adding that "I especially admired your habit of always quoting sources".
"You conspicuously did not quote a source when accusing me of 'abusive speech'.
"Why didn't you check your facts - or at least have the common courtesy to alert me - before summarily cancelling my event?"
Professor Dawkins' book about the study of evolution, The Selfish Gene, was named last week by the Royal Society as the most inspiring science book of all time.
Known as the home of the Free Speech moment in the 1960s, Berkeley has recently left that reputation in doubt as far-left protesters have sought to silence speakers and academics with whom they disagree.
Conservative authors Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos have each clashed with the University of California after events where they were due to speak were cancelled by the college administration out of fear for public safety.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40710165
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US considering arms to Ukraine, says envoy Volker - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Washington is reviewing whether to arm those fighting Russian-backed rebels, says a new envoy.
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US & Canada
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (second right) meets servicemen during a visit to Donetsk region in June
The new US special representative for Ukraine says Washington is actively reviewing whether to send weapons to help those fighting against Russian-backed rebels.
Kurt Volker told the BBC that arming Ukrainian government forces could change Moscow's approach.
He said he did not think the move would be provocative.
Russia warned that anything that heightened tension could jeopardise a solution to the conflict.
Mr Volker, a former US permanent representative to Nato, was given the role in Kiev earlier this month.
"Defensive weapons, ones that would allow Ukraine to defend itself, and to take out tanks for example, would actually help" stop Russia threatening Ukraine, he said in a BBC interview.
"I'm not again predicting where we go on this. That's a matter for further discussion and decision. But I think that argument that it would be provocative to Russia or emboldening of Ukraine is just getting it backwards," he added.
He said success in establishing peace in eastern Ukraine would require what he called a new strategic dialogue with Russia. On a visit to the front line on Sunday Mr Volker had described the situation as a "hot war" that had to be addressed as quickly as possible.
Responding to Mr Volker's latest remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC: "We have said more than once that any actions that provoke tension on the line of separation, that provoke a situation which is already complex, will only take us further away from the moment when this internal Ukrainian issue is resolved."
The UN says more than 10,000 people have died since the eastern Ukraine conflict erupted in April 2014, soon after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula. The fighting has displaced more than 1.6 million people.
A ceasefire was agreed in Minsk in February 2015, but its terms are far from being fulfilled. The leaders of France and Germany discussed the conflict over the phone with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia late on Monday.
There has been a sharp rise in violence in which eight Ukrainian soldiers were killed over 24 hours.
The US Department of State called it "the deadliest one-day period in 2017" in the eastern Ukraine conflict.
In a video statement, the department blamed the "Russian-led" rebels for the flare-up.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40712385
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New diesel and petrol vehicles to be banned from 2040 in UK - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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Ministers have also unveiled a £255m fund to help councils introduce steps to deal with pollution
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UK
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New diesel and petrol cars and vans will be banned in the UK from 2040 in a bid to tackle air pollution, the government has announced.
Ministers have also unveiled a £255m fund to help councils tackle emissions, including the potential for charging zones for the dirtiest vehicles.
But the £3bn clean air strategy does not include a scrappage scheme, calling previous ones "poor value" for money.
Local government leaders welcomed the funding but called for more detail.
Local authorities will be given direct financial support from the government, with £40m of the fund being made immediately.
They can use the funds for a range of measures, such as changing road layouts, implementing new technologies or encouraging residents on to public transport.
If those measures do not cut emissions enough, charging zones could be the next step - but the government says these should only be used for "limited periods".
The timetable for councils to come up with initial plans has been cut from 18 months to eight, with the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) wanting to "inject additional urgency" into the process.
It follows the government being given its own deadline of 31 July after High Court judges said it was failing to meet EU pollution limits.
Local Government Association environment spokesman Martin Tett said the plans to allow councils to switch their focus from monitoring air quality to improving air quality was the right move and welcomed the additional funding.
However, he opposed the view of the government to hold off on a scrappage scheme, arguing "this immediate intervention could help increase the uptake of lower emission vehicles".
Ministers have been wary of being seen to "punish" drivers of diesel cars, who, they argue, bought the vehicles after being encouraged to by the last Labour government because they produced lower carbon emissions.
The industry trade body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said it was important to avoid outright bans on diesels, which would hurt the sector.
SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said demand for alternatively fuelled vehicles was growing but still at a very low level.
"The industry instead wants a positive approach which gives consumers incentives to purchase these cars. We could undermine the UK's successful automotive sector if we don't allow enough time for the industry to adjust."
The AA said significant investment would be needed to install charging points across the country and warned the National Grid would come under pressure with a mass switch-on of recharging after the rush hour.
The UK announcement comes amid signs of an accelerating shift towards electric cars instead of petrol and diesel ones, at home and abroad:
So how will the air be cleaned up? Plans for a diesel scrappage scheme for old vehicles have been rejected by the Treasury as poor value for money. They may be reconsidered in the autumn.
The government has told councils to solve pollution on their own streets by improving public transport and considering restrictions on dirty diesel vehicles at peak times.
If that doesn't work, councils will be told to charge diesel drivers to come into towns.
The councils aren't happy to take the rap for the controversial policy when it was the government that encouraged the sale of diesel vehicles in the first place.
Today's government plan is not comprehensive - it doesn't address pollution from construction, farming and gas boilers.
And clean air campaigners say the government is using the 2040 electric cars announcement to distract from failings in its short-term pollution policy.
Air pollution is thought to be linked to about 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, and transport also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
A government spokesman said poor air quality was "the biggest environmental risk" to public health in the UK.
The measures are "good" in the long term but "not very effective" in the short, industry expert David Bailey said.
A switch-over to electric cars would likely come in the mid-2020s, he predicted, when electric cars would out-compete petrol and diesel ones on factors like cost.
"This sets a very clear direction of travel, but petrol and diesel cars won't exist by 2040," he said.
He said more incentives were needed now, otherwise urban air quality would not improve.
Environmental law firm ClientEarth welcomed the measures, but said it wanted to see more detail.
Chief executive James Thornton said the law found ministers must bring down illegal levels of air pollution as soon as possible.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas welcomed a ban but said it did not go "nearly far enough or fast enough".
Friends of the Earth said the plan was a "cynical" move which passed the buck of saving lives to local authorities.
Labour said the government was only acting after being taken to court.
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokeswoman Sue Hayman MP said the government had a "squeamish" attitude to clear air zones, and was shunting the problem on to local authorities.
"With nearly 40 million people living in areas with illegal levels of air pollution, action is needed now, not in 23 years' time," she said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40723581
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Inside a US/UK trade deal - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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How would the UK benefit from a trade deal with the US and is it likely to happen?
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Business
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The US has some big healthcare businesses which would be keen to establish a stronger presence in the UK
Relations with the United States were always going to be a high priority for British trade policy post-Brexit.
So no surprise that Liam Fox has gone to Washington to discuss prospects.
The International Trade Secretary is pushing for a bilateral trade liberalisation agreement with the US to take effect when the UK leaves the EU.
And his American hosts seem well disposed to the idea in principle. Better access to the US market would go down well among many UK businesses too.
It is, after all the UK's largest single export market, though well behind the rest of the EU taken together.
The US is also the second largest foreign supplier to the UK. So a freer trade relationship could reduce the cost of those imports.
There was also a great deal of enthusiasm among British business for the EU's negotiations with the US, a project known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Now that British business won't be able to make use of any benefits that might come from that exercise, if it is ever completed, a deal with the US would be helpful for many.
Having said that, many regard it as a higher priority to preserve trade access to the EU as far as possible on existing terms. That is broadly the position of a number of British business lobbies.
There are some areas of any UK/US talks that might be difficult. Experience with the TTIP negotiations gives some clues as to the kind pressures the British government is likely to face at home.
Genetically modified crops - like this maize - is an area for discussion
One is resolving disputes under the agreement, particularly any involving foreign investors.
Many trade and investment agreements provide for tribunals to be established if a foreign investor believes their interests have been harmed by the host government acting in a way that contravenes the agreement.
They can seek financial compensation, and there are many cases where they have been successful. The system is known as investor state dispute settlement (ISDS).
It has been around for decades, but has become more controversial in recent years. Critics see it as giving international businesses unfair leverage over the policies of elected governments.
There will be business lobbies on both sides keen to see some sort of arrangement along these lines and campaigners vigorously opposed.
There is a particular issue for some groups in the UK about how this might affect the National Health Service. It came up in the context of the TTIP negotiations.
The issue was partly whether the agreement might force the British government to privatise health service provision - and also about whether the agreement would make it hard or impossible to reverse any privatisation that did occur.
The issue was that reversing such a move could deprive a foreign health company of business, which campaigners argued could enable it to use the ISDS tribunal system to seek compensation from the host (British) government.
Chlorinated chicken is a familiar feature on US shelves but is banned in the EU
The US has some big healthcare businesses which would be keen to establish a stronger presence in the UK. How well founded that fear would be would depend on the wording of the agreement, but once detailed negotiations get underway it's likely to be brought up.
In the context of TTIP, the idea that it would compromise public provision of healthcare was robustly rejected by, among others the British government, but campaigners did not accept that.
Then there are food issues. Dr Fox has already responded to concerns about American chicken washed with chlorine. That came up in the TTIP talks too and it might well make an appearance again. The practice is widely used in the US to remove microbial contamination, but it is not permitted in the UK.
Beef fed with growth promoting hormones, another practice used in the US, could also be difficult. It's banned in the EU on the basis of health concerns.
This is a trade dispute that has rumbled on for many years and the EU has lost the case in the World Trade Organization, which accepted that the hormones were safe.
The EU has never complied with that ruling and still bans such meat.
Another food issue is genetically modified crops. They do have a presence in the European food chain, partly through animal feed. But the approval process for new GM crops is seen by US farm groups as excessively slow and cumbersome.
Movement on all three of these issues is likely to be important for US negotiators. The National Farmers' Union in the UK is receptive to the idea of reforming the GM approvals process, but the other two are more of a problem.
Nonetheless there are certainly opportunities that businesses in both countries can see. For industry, the relatively straightforward area is tariffs, taxes on imported goods.
They are relatively low in both the US and the UK (which currently adopts the EU's tariff policy). But there are some goods for which they are relatively high (10% for cars entering the UK from outside the EU, for example).
Many industry and financial services groups would also welcome closer regulatory cooperation. It would simplify business for suppliers and could conceivably lower costs for customers.
In any event, for now the UK remains a member of the EU and its common trade policy.
But that certainly doesn't stop negotiators discussing what a post-Brexit deal would look like.
• None What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40718737
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Charlie Gard: 'Last precious moments' for parents with their son - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Chris Gard and Connie Yates are distraught after ending their legal battle to treat their baby in the US.
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London
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Chris Gard: "We are so sorry we could not save you"
Charlie Gard's parents are spending their "last precious moments" with their terminally ill son after ending their legal fight to take him to the US for treatment.
Chris Gard and Connie Yates want to spend the "maximum amount of time they have left with Charlie".
The couple ended the case after a US doctor told them it was now too late to treat Charlie's rare genetic condition.
Lawyers for the couple are due back in court on Tuesday afternoon.
Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has not said when life support will end.
However, Mr Gard and Ms Yates, from Bedfont, west London, said Charlie would not reach his first birthday on 4 August.
Charlie has a rare genetic condition and would not live to see his first birthday, his father said
In its statement to the High Court, the hospital said it was "increasingly surprised and disappointed" the US doctor, Professor Michio Hirano, "had not read Charlie's contemporaneous medical records or viewed Charlie's brain imaging or read all of the second opinions about Charlie's condition".
GOSH said Professor Hirano had not taken the opportunity to see Charlie until last week, despite being offered the chance to do so by the hospital in January.
Even though the professor gave written evidence at all the court cases, the hospital said it only emerged last week that he had not read the judge's ruling following the first High Court hearing in April.
The hospital added it was concerned to hear the professor state in the witness box at the High Court hearing on 13 July that he had a financial interest in some of the treatment he proposed prescribing for Charlie.
Charlie has encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He has brain damage and cannot move his arms or legs.
His parents had asked Mr Justice Francis to rule that their son should be allowed to undergo a trial of nucleoside therapy in New York, a move opposed by London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, which argued it would be "futile".
The Family Division of the High Court heard on Monday that US neurologist Dr Michio Hirano was no longer willing to offer the experimental therapy after he had seen the results of a new MRI scan last week.
Speaking outside court, Mr Gard said: "We are now going to spend our last precious moments with our son Charlie, who unfortunately won't make his first birthday in just under two weeks' time.
"Mummy and Daddy love you so much Charlie, we always have and we always will and we are so sorry that we couldn't save you."
Mr Justice Francis said he hoped lessons could be learned from the "tragic" case.
He has suggested that parents and hospital bosses who disagree over life-or-death treatment for children should be forced to mediate in a bid to avoid litigation.
"I recognise, of course, that negotiating issues such as the life or death of a child seems impossible and often will be," he said.
"However, it is my clear view that mediation should be attempted in all cases such as this one, even if all that it does is achieve a greater understanding by the parties of each other's positions."
Charlie has been in intensive care at Great Ormond Street Hospital since October
Mr Gard's and Ms Yates's five-month legal battle started after doctors at Great Ormond Street had said the therapy would not help and that life-support treatment should stop.
They subsequently failed to overturn rulings in the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court in London, and also failed to persuade judges at the European Court of Human Rights to intervene.
The couple made the "most painful of decisions" on Monday after reviewing new scan results which showed Charlie had deteriorated to the "point of no return".
In a statement, Great Ormond Street said: "The agony, desolation and bravery of their decision command GOSH's utmost respect and humble all who work there."
Mr Gard and Ms Yates hope to establish a foundation to ensure Charlie's voice "continues to be heard".
They had raised more than £1.3m for the treatment in the US.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40712913
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Skull found during missing Corrie Mckeague search 'was not his' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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A skull found while police searched a landfill site was a woman's from before 1945, police say.
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Suffolk
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Corrie Mckeague was last seen in Bury St Edmunds on 24 September
A skull found amid the large-scale search for Corrie Mckeague was not that of the missing airman, police said.
It was found at a landfill site in Landbeach, Cambridgeshire at a time when police were trawling another landfill at nearby Milton for the missing 23-year-old.
Police said the skull was female and dated back to pre-1945. Mr Mckeague's family was informed of the find.
Mr Mckeague, of Dunfermline, was last seen in Bury St Edmunds in September.
A spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire Police said: "On April 14 a human skull was discovered at a landfill site in Ely Road, Landbeach, near Cambridge.
"Early indications of the age of the skull meant it was highly unlikely to be that of Corrie Mckeague, however Suffolk Police and Corrie's family were informed.
"It has since been established that the skull is female and dates back to before 1945.
"There are no suspicious circumstances therefore the investigation has been closed."
The spokeswoman said the skull was found by workers at the site and had been traced back to a house clearance of a man who "collected curios". The coroner was made aware of the discovery, she said.
Thousands of tonnes of waste have been searched and sifted at the landfill site in Milton
On Friday, Suffolk Police confirmed it had ended its search of waste at the Milton landfill site.
Police also said on Friday an external force was reviewing the investigation.
On Monday, Suffolk Police said that until this review was completed the area of the landfill site searched would be left in "its current state" and would not be used for further waste disposal.
Corrie's mother Nicola Urquhart has urged the force to reconsider and is considering seeking an injunction to stop the site being backfilled.
More than 21,000 people have signed a petition calling on police to continue searching the waste site.
Mr Mckeague's girlfriend April Oliver gave birth to their baby daughter Ellie in June
The RAF serviceman has not been seen since a night out in the Suffolk town when CCTV showed him entering a bin loading bay.
Suffolk Police said Mr Mckeague was known to "sleep in rubbish on a night out".
Det Supt Katie Elliott said the landfill search for Mr Mckeague had been "systematic, comprehensive and thorough".
Mr Mckeague's girlfriend April Oliver gave birth to their baby daughter Ellie in June.
On Facebook she wrote on Monday: "My little Ellie brings so much joy and happiness even at the hardest of times. Love you always."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-40706307
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Devon drugs death girl 'paid ultimate price' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The family of 15-year-old Leah Kerry say she knew the dangers but "thought she was invincible".
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Devon
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Leah Kerry died in Torbay Hospital after apparently suffering from an adverse reaction to a psychoactive substance she had taken
A girl who is thought to have died because of an adverse reaction to what used be called a legal high "paid the ultimate price", her family has said.
Leah Kerry, 15, who attended school in Salisbury, died in hospital on 16 July having been found unconscious at an address in Newton Abbot, Devon.
In a statement, her family described her as "a courageous and confident young woman."
She knew the dangers of drugs, but "thought she was invincible", it said.
"Sadly, despite being well aware of the risks, she thought she was invincible and she rolled the dice and has paid the ultimate price", the statement said.
Leah Kerry's family said she "rolled the dice and paid the ultimate price"
A statement given to Devon and Cornwall Police on behalf of the family said: "Leah lit up any room she walked into with her incredible personality, sense of humour, striking looks and demeanour.
"Those who know her will ache to hear the words 'You allriiight' one last time."
The family warned other people against taking "dangerous NPS (new psychoactive substances) tablets" and urged "the government to place the dangers of psychoactive substances at the top of their agenda for discussion on the back of their Drugs Strategy for 2017."
Jacob Khanlarian, 20, from Newton Abbot, who was charged with intent to supply drugs in connection with the incident, will appear before Exeter Crown Court on 10 August.
• None Legal highs and chemsex to be targeted
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-40706683
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Essex nursery 'closes because of universal free hours scheme' - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Fidgety Fingers is one of many nurseries which say they cannot make government funding rates stretch.
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Education & Family
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When ministers pledged to double the amount of free childcare for working parents, they never dreamed it could lead to some top nurseries closing.
But just over two years on, that is exactly what is about to happen.
Fidgety Fingers in Essex, one of many nurseries which says it cannot make government funding rates stretch over 30 hours, will shut on Wednesday.
The government says it has boosted the rates it pays councils to fund the scheme, including Essex County Council.
The Department for Education is sure that the 30 hours scheme, which is due to start in September, will be a success, like it says its trial scheme has been.
But the popular pre-school, which has been repeatedly rated outstanding by Ofsted, has only just broken even over the last few years like many nurseries and pre-schools.
The children make full use of its expansive garden, driving around in a make-believe bus, shaded from the sun by the maternal arms of a beautiful apple tree.
Based on the same site as owner Jackie Neagle's home, it has a familial feel, with all the children calling the nursery staff "auntie".
The children will soon be off to pastures new
"I've never had a parent look at the nursery who hasn't asked for a place," she says.
Fidgety Fingers caters for pre-school children, with all of those aged three and four being entitled to 15 hours free childcare a week.
But from September, those from families with working parents will be entitled to 30 hours free care/early years education per week - just so long as their parents do not earn more than £100,000 a year each.
Like many other nurseries, the rate Jackie receives from the government via Essex County Council for the 15 free hours does not cover her staff costs or overheads.
When she opened 10 years ago, the money just about worked, she said, but as the bills and overheads have increased it no longer stretches that far.
And in recent months the rate the nursery is paid has been reduced to £4.21 an hour from a high of £4.61 several years ago.
"Currently we make a loss of £1.95 an hour per child, so we ask for voluntary contributions of £30 per week per child," she says.
Although parents always say they are willing to pay that, she says, they may only be able to do so for a little while.
"Life happens. You can't run a business on voluntary contributions."
But as nurseries are not allowed to charge any top-up fees - the free hours are advertised as free and must be at the point of use - that's exactly what she is having to do.
Many nurseries make up the shortfall by charging much higher rates for the additional hours, above cost for extras such as lunch or nappies, or by forcing parents to start at a certain time or take their hours in a certain way, she says.
"I am not prepared to charge £45 for an additional hour. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
"I am an honest person. I don't want to run a business dishonestly, to rip people off, but I do need to make a living."
Fidgety Fingers has been offering additional hours, but these are charged at £6.50 per hour.
But when the number of free hours is doubled, the nursery will not be able to charge for additional hours, unless it dramatically increases its opening hours and, as a small set-up with only a small number of staff, that will not be possible.
So after three decades of working with children, Jackie has reached the point where she feels unable to continue.
Her families have of course been shocked and disappointed, says Jackie.
One mother, Jordana Mould, whose third and youngest child, Rufus, is at the nursery, said: "Nothing will compare to Fidgety Fingers. It has become more than just a nursery for my family.
All three of Jordana's children have attended Fidgety Fingers
"However, I completely understand why Jackie has to close the doors.
"How can she run Fidgety Fingers on voluntary payments from parents every month?"
Ironically, Jackie says she started thinking about closing the nursery when it received its fourth outstanding rating by Ofsted.
"I realised I am not going to be able to reward my fantastic staff with a pay rise."
Despite the low pay of staff, children who have attended the nursery go into Reception a year ahead of their classmates on average, says Jackie.
Essex County Council said it had been working with local providers on their decisions on whether to offer the extended hours.
And it pledged to support any local families affected by the closure of this nursery.
The government says it has boosted funding rates in Essex for next year from £3.89 to £4.47 per hour.
The council is entitled to use a proportion of that money for its administration costs and like all local authorities has had to make huge budget savings in recent years.
Childcare minister Robert Goodwill said the extra free hours were funded nationally by a £1bn boost to raise rates paid to local providers.
He added that the rates were based on a comprehensive review of childcare costs and took account of current and future pressures.
But for the staff of Fidgety Fingers, that's not how it feels on the ground.
Jackie says: "The Early Years sector is very good at trying to patch up and make do... but for as long as we all try to do that, the more the government doesn't have to do anything.
"It's great for parents, but my staff who are earning an average of £8.50 an hour are subsidising parents who are earning up to £200,000 a year.
"And when you think about that, it just brings it all home."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40660648
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London acid attack suspected as men targeted in Bethnal Green - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The two teenagers flagged down police in east London after an unknown liquid was thrown at them.
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London
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Two men have been targeted in a suspected acid attack in east London
The Met Police said the men, thought to be in their late teens, flagged down officers in Bethnal Green at 19:00 BST on Tuesday.
Both men were taken to hospital. Police said it was still not known what liquid was thrown at them in Roman Road.
No arrests have been made. A Met Police spokesman said inquiries were ongoing and a crime scene remained in place in the area.
The condition of the two men is not yet known.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Two men are looked after by emergency services after an acid attack
A video posted on Twitter by Chris Lennon appeared to show a man not wearing a top pouring water over his face and torso while being helped by paramedics.
In the footage, another man is seen sitting on the pavement, also receiving medical assistance.
BBC journalist Neil Brennan, who lives in the area, said the attack happened outside a corner shop, about two minutes from the Tube station and near police and fire stations.
He said people nearby told him two Asian men had been attacked.
"I saw firemen filling two large bottles with water from the fire truck and ferrying it back and forth to the victims," he said.
Firefighters filled bottles of water from their vehicle
A tarpaulin was put in place at the scene
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40720437
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Adobe to kill off Flash plug-in by 2020 - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Once the go-to plug-in for video, the technology has been usurped by more reliable and secure apps.
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Technology
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Adobe's Flash software is regularly updated to remove flaws that cyber-thieves exploit
Adobe Systems has said that it plans to phase out its Flash Player plug-in by the end of 2020.
The technology was once one of the most widely used ways for people to watch video clips and play games online.
But it also attracted much criticism, particularly as flaws in its code meant it became a popular way for hackers to infect computers.
In recent years, much of its functionality has been offered by the rival HTML5 technology.
One of HTML5's benefits is that it can be used to make multimedia content available within webpages without requiring users to install and update a dedicated plug-in.
Apple was one of Flash's most vocal critics. The late Steve Jobs once wrote a public letter about its shortcomings, highlighting concerns about its reliability, security and performance.
The plug-in was never supported by Apple's iOS mobile devices.
Adobe's vice president of product development, Govind Balakrishnan, said the firm had chosen to end Flash because other technologies, such as HTML5, had "matured enough and are capable enough to provide viable alternatives to the Flash player."
He added: "Few technologies have had such a profound and positive impact in the internet era."
Apps developer Malcolm Barclay, who had worked on Flash in its early days, told the BBC: "It fulfilled its promise for a while but it never saw the mobile device revolution coming and ultimately that's what killed it."
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When Adobe acquired Flash in its 2005 purchase of Macromedia, the technology was on more than 98% of personal computers.
But on Chrome, now the most popular web browser, Flash's usage has fallen off dramatically.
In 2014 it was used each day by 80% of desktop users, according to Google. The current figure is just 17%.
"This trend reveals that sites are migrating to open-web technologies, which are faster and more power-efficient than Flash," Google added. "They're also more secure."
Google phased out full support for Flash software at the end of last year.
Mr Balakrishnan said it did not expect the demise of Flash to affect profits at Adobe.
"We think the opportunity for Adobe is greater in a post-Flash world," he said.
But the firm added that it remained committed to support Flash up until the end of 2020 "as customers and partners put their migration plans into place".
There was immediate reaction to the news on Twitter.
• None Google to phase out Flash on Chrome
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40716304
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Reality Check: Has personal debt been growing? - BBC News
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2017-07-25
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The Bank of England's stability chief warns of the dangers of rising personal loans.
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Business
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The Bank of England's financial stability director, Alex Brazier, has been warning about the dangers of rising personal loans.
He said that High Street banks were at risk of entering "a spiral of complacency" about mounting consumer debt levels.
"Household debt - like most things that are good in moderation - can be dangerous in excess," he said.
The Bank of England's own figures put total debt to individuals at about £1.5 trillion, which is an average of £28,000 for everyone over 16 in the UK.
Most of that - about £1.3tn - is made up of mortgages. The rest is for credit cards, overdrafts and loans to buy things like cars, bikes or kitchens.
If you look at what's been happening to lending to individuals, you can see from the chart above that it was rising sharply in the years leading up to the financial crisis, then it flattened out. But in the last couple of years it's started rising again.
Mr Brazier talked about the risk to banks from the £200bn of non-mortgage debt, which has been growing much faster than household incomes.
The credit-card element is £68bn, which is up 18% in the last three years.
Of the remaining £130bn, the big growth area has been car loans, with four-fifths of new cars last year bought using Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) deals, which tend to come from finance companies linked to car manufacturers. The Financial Conduct Authority is already concerned about the amount we're borrowing to buy cars.
Can we afford all this? Household debt including mortgages as a proportion of household income rose from 95% in 1997 to 160% before the financial crisis. It then fell back to about 140% but has now started ticking back up. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that it will reach 153% in 2022.
And all of these Bank of England statistics exclude student loans - currently about £89bn of outstanding student debt, which has more than doubled in the last five years.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40716366
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Old £1 coin spending deadline looms - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The new 12-sided £1 coin now outnumbers the old version, which is soon to be withdrawn.
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Business
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Consumers have less than three months to spend, bank or donate round £1 coins as the new 12-sided version outnumbers the old for the first time.
The Treasury says there are now more of the new £1 coins, which first entered circulation in March, than the old round pound.
From 15 October, shops can refuse the old version of the coin.
However, most banks and Post Office counters will continue to accept them from customers.
"The clock is ticking. We are urging the public to spend, bank or donate their old pound coins and asking businesses who are yet to do so, to update their systems before the old coin ceases to be legal tender," said Andrew Jones, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.
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The Royal Mint is striking 1.5 billion new 12-sided £1 coins, which were introduced to help crack down on counterfeiting.
The Mint has claimed the new £1 is the "most secure coin in the world", replacing the previous £1 coin, of which about one in 40 are thought to be fake.
The new coin has a string of anti-counterfeiting details, including material inside the coin itself which can be detected when electronically scanned by coin-counting or payment machines.
Other security measures include an image that works like a hologram, and micro-sized lettering inside both rims.
Number to enter circulation: 1.5 billion - about 23 per person. Old £1 coins will be melted down to make new ones
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40717386
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'Beach ball-sized' hedgehog rescued by Scottish SPCA - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The animal had swollen to about four times its normal size after air became trapped under its skin.
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Glasgow & West Scotland
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Zeppelin was spotted in Shotts, North Lanarkshire, on Sunday
A hedgehog that had swollen to the size of a beach ball is being cared for by the Scottish SPCA.
The animal was spotted by a member of the public on Sunday in Shotts, North Lanarkshire.
Vets believe the hedgehog was clipped by a car, puncturing a lung and causing air to be trapped under the skin.
The Scottish SPCA said the hedgehog, nicknamed "Zeppelin" by staff, had now "deflated" and was being cared for at one of the charity's rescue centres.
The swollen hedgehog was discovered near Minard Road in Shotts and was suffering from "balloon syndrome".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Vets believe the hedgehog had air trapped under its skin after puncturing a lung
Colin Seddon, manager of the Scottish SPCA's National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Fishcross said: "Our animal rescue officer Louise Hume got a bit of a shock when she went to pick him up.
"He's certainly one of the largest hedgehogs we've taken into our care.
"He's been seen by our vet Romain, who is hopeful that Zeppelin - now deflated- will make a full recovery.
"He'll be closely monitored at our centre to make sure infection doesn't set in before being released back into the wild once he's fully recovered."
The hedgehog has now "deflated" to its normal size
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-40728390
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Oxford City Council threatens homeless with £2.5k fine over bags - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Oxford City Council is threatening to fine or prosecute rough sleepers who leave bags in doorways.
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Oxford
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Homeless people who keep possessions in doorways in Oxford can face fines of up to £2,500.
Homeless people who keep possessions in doorways in Oxford have been warned they face fines of up to £2,500.
Notices have been attached to piles of bags in Oxford city centre which belong to people sleeping rough.
Green Party councillor David Thomas said it was an "outrageous" bid to "intimidate" the homeless.
Oxford City Council said the abandoned bags posed a hazard by blocking fire exits and lockers were available to those who sought help.
The notices issued by the authority said prosecution could follow if the items were not removed.
Notices issued by the council last week warned fines or prosecution could follow
Neo, who sleeps rough in Oxford, said he had his possessions confiscated by the council.
"Most of the stuff which was taken was stuff that the public donated... it's a shame," he said, adding he now carries his possessions around in a trolley.
Oxford City Council said those issued with notices had two days to collect their belongings, and everything was taken by the owners except "a soiled duvet and pieces of cardboard" which were removed.
Neo said he has been forced to carry his belongings around on a trolley
The local authority also said homeless people who engage with aid services could access lockers to store their belongings.
However, Ashley, another homeless man from Oxford, said the lockers were not big enough.
"What Oxford needs is a just a space for stuff to be stored" he said.
If prosecuted the individual could face a maximum fine of £2,500
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-40713992
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Charlie Gard: Court hears hospice best option for baby - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The judge will rule by 14:00 BST on Wednesday whether his parents can take Charlie home to die.
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London
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Connie Yates and Chris Gard's lawyer said Great Ormond Street Hospital was obstructing attempts to take Charlie home
Moving Charlie Gard to a hospice to die would be the best option for the terminally-ill baby, a court has heard.
The 11-month-old's parents had returned to the High Court to seek permission to take him home for "a few days of tranquillity outside the hospital".
But Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said there were practical problems with that proposal, for example his ventilation equipment would not be able to fit through their front door.
The judge will rule on Wednesday.
At Tuesday's hearing, the judge said hospital managers had suggested a hospice would give Charlie and his parents the space, privacy and protection they needed.
Chris Gard and Connie Yates have pleaded for a paediatric intensive care doctor to come forward to help their son die at home.
"We promised Charlie every day we would take him home. It seems really upsetting after everything we've been through to deny us this," Ms Yates said.
Grant Armstrong, representing the parents, told Mr Justice Francis that his clients' "last wish is that Charlie dies at home".
He suggested a portable ventilator and oxygen supply could be used but accused GOSH of "putting up obstacles".
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Chris Gard: "We are so sorry we could not save you"
Lawyers for the hospital told the judge they "would like to be able to fulfil the parents' wishes... if it is safe and practicable and in Charlie's best interests".
However, Katie Gollop QC, who leads the hospital's legal team, said providing intensive care for Charlie away from a hospital was not simple.
Charlie's condition requires air to be forced into his lungs. She said as far as the hospital was aware invasive ventilation was only provided in a hospital setting.
Ms Gollop said Charlie would need to be "monitored by an ITU trained nurse at all times, with an ITU doctor on call and close at hand".
Such resources "cannot be provided by GOSH to Charlie at his parents' home", she said.
Charlie has been in intensive care at Great Ormond Street Hospital since October
Mr Justice Francis said: "If going home can be achieved within reason then I would like to achieve that for them."
He said he would make a final decision, about whether Charlie can be taken home, at 14:00 BST on Wednesday.
Charlie's parents, from Bedfont, west London, said they had been spending their "last precious moments" with their son.
Charlie has encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He has brain damage and cannot move his arms or legs.
His parents had asked Mr Justice Francis to rule that their son should be allowed to undergo a trial of nucleoside therapy in New York, a move opposed by medics at GOSH who argued the treatment would be "futile".
The Family Division of the High Court heard on Monday that US neurologist Professor Michio Hirano was no longer willing to offer the experimental therapy after he had seen the results of a new MRI scan.
In a statement to the High Court, GOSH said Professor Michio Hirano had not taken the opportunity to see Charlie until last week, despite being offered the chance to do so by the hospital in January.
The hospital said it was also concerned the professor had declared a financial interest in some of the treatment he had proposed prescribing for Charlie.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40716292
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Justine Damond death: Woman 'slapped police car' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Australian Justine Damond called 911 and was shot and killed by police less than an hour later.
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US & Canada
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Investigators say that before Justine Damond was shot to death by a Minneapolis police officer, a woman "slapped" the back of his patrol car.
The search warrant issued by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) does not say if that woman was the Australian yoga teacher.
The document may shed light on the possible source of the "loud sound" that startled the car's driver.
Damond was killed by Officer Mohamed Noor after calling 911 two weeks ago.
The search warrant, which was provided to local news stations by investigators, stated: "Upon police arrival, a female 'slaps' the back of the patrol squad.
"After that, it is unknown to BCA agents what exactly happened, but the female became deceased in the alley."
Mohamed Noor, who fired the fatal shot across his partner and through the driver's window, has so far refused to be interviewed by investigators.
Officer Matthew Harrity, who was driving the police cruiser through the alley behind Damond's home, has told detectives that they were startled by a "loud sound" just before the shooting.
Mock-official signs were posted around the city over the weekend, but quickly were taken down
Neither officer had turned on their body camera, which recently-adopted regulations require every officer to carry.
Both men have been placed on paid administrative leave.
The BCA report was compiled about seven hours after the shooting
Also detailed in the report are several items recovered from the scene and submitted for forensic examination by investigators.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Mayor Betsy Hodges was interrupted by angry protesters at a news conference about the police chief's resignation
A 9mm cartridge shell, Damond's mobile phone, blood from the rear driver's side door of the squad car, and fingerprints and spots on the rear and exterior of the vehicle were all recorded by the BCA.
Investigators have determined that Damond, who moved from Australia two years ago, was unarmed when she was killed.
Damond, 40, had called 911 twice before midnight to report a possible rape in her upscale Minneapolis neighbourhood about 20 minutes before her death,.
Her death, as well as the deaths of black men Philando Castile and Jamar Clark at the hands of police, has led to criticism of the police department and forced the resignation of the police chief on Friday.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40718997
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Sperm count drop 'could make humans extinct' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Sperm counts in men from North America, Europe and Australia halve in less than 40 years, research warns.
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Health
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Humans could become extinct if sperm counts in men continue to fall at current rates, a doctor has warned.
Researchers assessing the results of nearly 200 studies say sperm counts among men from North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, seem to have halved in less than 40 years.
Some experts are sceptical of the Human Reproduction Update findings.
But lead researcher Dr Hagai Levine said he was "very worried" about what might happen in the future.
The assessment, one of the largest ever undertaken, brings together the results of 185 studies between 1973 and 2011.
Dr Levine, an epidemiologist, told the BBC that if the trend continued humans would become extinct.
"If we will not change the ways that we are living and the environment and the chemicals that we are exposed to, I am very worried about what will happen in the future," he said.
"Eventually we may have a problem, and with reproduction in general, and it may be the extinction of the human species."
Scientists not involved in the study have praised the quality of the research but say that it may be premature to come to such a conclusion.
Dr Levine, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration, and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count in men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The study also indicates the rate of decline among men living in these countries is continuing and possibly even increasing.
In contrast, no significant decline was seen in South America, Asia and Africa, but the researchers point out that far fewer studies have been conducted on these continents. However, Dr Levine is concerned that eventually sperm counts could fall in these places too.
Many previous studies have indicated similar sharp declines in sperm count in developed economies, but sceptics say that a large proportion of them have been flawed.
Some have investigated a relatively small number of men, or included only men who attend fertility clinics and are, in any case, more likely to have low sperm counts.
There is also concern that studies that claim to show a decline in sperm counts are more likely to get published in scientific journals than those that do not.
Another difficulty is that early methods of counting sperm may have overestimated the true count.
Taken together these factors may have created a false view of falling sperm counts.
But the researchers claim to have accounted for some of these deficiencies, leaving some doubters, such as Prof Allan Pacey of Sheffield University, less sceptical.
He said: "I've never been particularly convinced by the many studies published so far claiming that human sperm counts have declined in the recent past."
"However, the study today by Dr Levine and his colleagues deals head-on with many of the deficiencies of previous studies."
But Prof Pacey believes that although the new study has reduced the possibility of errors it does not entirely remove them. So, he says, the results should be treated with caution.
"The debate has not yet been resolved and there is clearly much work still to be done.
"However, the paper does represent a step forward in the clarity of the data which might ultimately allow us to define better studies to examine this issue."
There is no clear evidence for the reason for this apparent decrease. But it has been linked with exposure to chemicals used in pesticides and plastics, obesity, smoking, stress, diet, and even watching too much TV.
Dr Levine says that there is an urgent need to find out why sperm counts are decreasing and to find ways of reversing the trend.
"We must take action - for example, better regulation of man-made chemicals - and we must continue our efforts on tackling smoking and obesity."
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40719743
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Sex on plane Bristol teacher struck off from profession - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Eleanor Wilson, 28, had sex with a male pupil in an aeroplane toilet while on a school trip.
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Bristol
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A teacher who had sex with a student in a plane toilet on a school trip has been banned from the profession.
Eleanor Wilson, 28, who worked in Bristol, kissed the pupil and drank alcohol with him while on the flight.
A National College for Teaching & Leadership (NCTL) panel found she engaged in sexual activity with a male pupil in August 2015.
The panel's report found her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and banned her from teaching indefinitely.
The NCTL found an "inappropriate relationship" took place with the pupil in 2015/16 when she met him in her office, shared her mobile number with him, took him on outings, drank alcohol with him and kissed him on more than one occasion.
Miss Wilson also encouraged the pupil, who has not been identified, to hide their relationship and lied about it when an investigation into the allegations was undertaken by the school, the panel said.
The panel ruled she "fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession".
The teacher, who had denied the allegations, was sacked by the school last year and was not present at the NCTL hearing.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-40733014
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Detroit recalls five days of violent unrest a half century later - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Fifty years after state and federal troops descended on Detroit to quell the unrest, locals recall the deep scars left behind.
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US & Canada
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The civil unrest left 43 people dead and more than 1,000 injured
Darryle Buchanan was approaching his 12th birthday when he awoke on the morning of 23 July 1967 to the sounds of what appeared to be a raucous party outside.
As the young altar boy rose from his bed and ironed his cassocks that Sunday morning, preparing for duty at St Agnes Catholic Church, he could smell smoke.
"I thought people must be barbecuing or something," he recalled.
The phone rang and his mother, an emergency room technician who worked an overnight shift, called to tell her son to stay put.
Fewer than 10 blocks away, Detroit was beginning to burn.
Fifty years ago and five days before Mr Buchanan's birthday, police raided an after-hours African-American blind pig, or an unlicensed drinking and gambling club, and arrested 82 people in the middle of the night.
The incident touched off civil unrest across Detroit over the next five days, prompting Michigan Governor George Romney to deploy the National Guard and eventually President Lyndon Johnson to send troops from the US Army's 82nd and 101st Airborne Division to quell the violence.
Once the dust settled, 43 people were dead, 1,000 were injured and more than 7,000 were arrested - many of whom were African-American - in what seemed like a warzone to the rest of the country.
The subject is the focus of Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow's forthcoming film Detroit, which centres on a single incident at the Algiers Motel during that week of violence.
Police fatally shot three black teens at point-blank range and beat other black men while looking for snipers at the motel.
Only one officer faced trial for the shootings and was acquitted by an all-white jury - a refrain that has continued in recent years amid a national debate on excessive use of police force.
The disorder caused more than $50m (£38m) in damages and reduced an upwards of 2,000 buildings to rubble
Mr Buchanan spent the next week watching as the 12th Street neighbourhood - once a bustling business and commercial district - became engulfed in chaos, destroyed brick by brick.
"People were coming down the street with shopping carts and things in their hands," he recalled of that first morning.
"I actually saw a guy run from the meat market across 12th Street with a side of beef on his back," he says with a chuckle. "I for one didn't know what he was going to do with it because you gotta have the right carving tools for that, but that's just how insane it was."
Mr Buchanan remembers sweaty nights sleeping beneath his grandparents' dining room table that week, peering out the window as police raided the building next door and watching looters burn down a dry cleaners as he stood across the street.
"When the building collapsed through the floor, there was this rush of cool air that came out of the basement that you could feel change in the intensity of the heat," he says.
"These rats were on fire, running down on 12th Street, as the whole thing came down.
"When a building catches fire it doesn't smell like a bonfire or paper burning. It is a smell like after an earthquake or something, that smell of decay. And that lingered because the rubble just sat there."
"It was a warzone," Mr Buchanan says
The devastation included more than $50m (£38m) in damages and reduced more than 2,000 buildings to piles of smouldering ashes, plunging the one-time Model City into a downward spiral of poverty and blight.
During the stifling temperatures of the summer of 1967, known elsewhere as the Summer of Love, civil unrest erupted across nearly 130 cities across the country - but Detroit would mark the bloodiest and its scars would run deep for decades to come.
"Detroit's story is America's story," says Marlowe Stoudamire, the director of the Detroit Historical Museum's exhibit commemorating the event.
Detroit 67: Looking Back to Move Forward, is a three-year project spanning the 50 years before and after 1967, including oral histories from hundreds of locals and former residents.
"We've had some victories and we've had a lot of failures," he says. "But it's important for us to look at our collective history no matter where we are and understand how it intersects with our lives."
Before the unrest, Detroit Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh, often described as a white liberal visionary, touted the Motor City as a successful example of President Johnson's Model Cities Program.
Detroit was among several cities to receive millions in federal funding for urban development as its booming economy attracted thousands of workers to the centre of the automobile industry.
"Detroit was really this shining city on a hill in terms of racial harmony," says Jeffrey Horner, a Wayne State University urban studies and planning senior lecturer who is teaching a course on the events.
The city, home to the three largest US carmakers, brimmed with wealth and boasted more than 90% of the car market after World War Two.
"Detroit had this amazing history before the riots, but it was this 10-year period of time where city's fortunes completely reversed," Mr Horner says.
For many, the blind pig arrests marked the final straw in the black community's long-simmering frustrations with economic strife, housing discrimination and racial tensions with a predominantly white police force.
By 1967, African-Americans made up just 5% of the police force, but roughly 40% of the population.
The 1967 crisis has been described as riots, with hundreds of locals taking part in burning buildings, ransacking local businesses and widespread violence.
Of the 43 people killed, 33 were African-American and 10 were white, including a police officer, two firefighters and a National Guardsman.
But the disorder has also been called a rebellion, underscoring long-standing economic and racial frustrations among the city's large black community amid a period of urban renewal.
"The timber was dry that weekend," says Mr Horner. "It should have been no surprise to anybody in the black community but I think there is almost unanimity this took the white power base in the city completely by surprise."
The chaos on the streets was indeed met by shock from city officials and police, who were overwhelmed by the violence and required both state and federal help to put an end to the volatility.
Both state and federal troops were called in to help quell the unrest
Mr Horner is among those who refer to the unrest as a rebellion, titling his class The 1967 Rebellion: Retrospect and Prospect.
He says his research shows that the black community was "entirely morally justified" in rebellion against its mistreatment.
"These were very disenfranchised people and people who were being treated as second-class citizens," he says. "But I don't think there was any justification for the horrible outcomes and loss of lives and loss of property.
"It really turned the city upside down and in many respects the city hasn't recovered from it, but as far as the rebellion occurring in the first place, I think it was justified."
Ike McKinnon, a former police chief and deputy mayor, was one of the few African-American police officers on duty as the unrest roiled Detroit.
He was driving home after a long shift when he was pulled over by two white officers, he recalled in the Detroit 67 project.
Still dressed in uniform, Mr McKinnon was ordered to get out of his car, where one of the officers pointed a gun in his face and said: "Tonight you're going to die, nigger."
Mr McKinnon said he saw the officer begin to pull the trigger, then he dived back into his car and took off as they open fire.
"So that was a sad reality to me that here we had these two police officers who shot at me, and it hit me in terms of, if they shot at me, a fellow police officer, what are they going to do to other people in the street, the city?" he said.
Before the unrest, Stella Heatley, a British nanny from Suffolk who worked for the British Council in nearby Grosse Pointe Park from 1966 to 1969, recalls the thrill of taking a bus downtown to shop at department stores, never concerned for her safety.
"It was really a pleasant life. We really didn't think anything about it," she says of how she spent her days as a nanny. But then came the outbreak of violence and her sense of well-being changed.
"The riots really put a stop to going downtown with the same sense of security."
Mrs Heatley, who permanently returned to Detroit in 1973 after marrying her American husband, Henry, remembers hearing about the violence a day after the police raid.
She received a phone call from the Council to pack a bag and to be ready to leave, possibly by boat, on Monday afternoon.
The family remained, but Mrs Heatley remembers watching television images of plumes of smoke billowing from the streets.
"There was a media blackout so it was about a week before the full gravity of the damage done became clear to the general public," she says.
"They burned everything," Mrs Heatley says
"It was just block after block after block just burnt to the ground," she says, describing the days that followed. "They had burnt their own homes, their own shops, their own professionals - it was just decimated.
"People were genuinely alarmed that if it started there it could continue elsewhere. There was a fear," she added, "an apprehension."
The fear was palpable - and it hung over the city, Mrs Heatley says.
"People literally left in the next few weeks because they weren't sure of what would happen, what the impact on immediate future of the city would be and they were afraid, in some cases, for the children going to school," she says. "They just didn't feel safe."
The city's population would indeed shrink from 1.8 million people, at its peak in 1950 as the country's fifth largest city, to just 672,000 people today.
The Twelfth Street business district never recovered after 1967, leading many of the buildings to fall into a state of disrepair and shop owners to abandon the area.
The street now stands commercially barren, marked by empty plots of land, a park and housing complexes.
"I felt this sense of loss that the community I knew was never going to be the same. And it wasn't," Mr Buchanan says.
The events also exacerbated the white flight of the middle class to the suburbs, which began in the 1950s, starving the city of tax revenue and ultimately leading to the decline of Detroit's public schools.
But the unrest is also a reminder to residents of the community leadership that rose from the ashes of 1967, with the creation of several organisations including New Detroit and Focus: HOPE.
Some of those community-driven changes served as the city's backbone as it endured the following decades of economic turmoil, Mr Horner points out, including the so-called Great Recession of the late 2000s, the near collapse of the car industry and Detroit's historic declaration of municipal bankruptcy in 2013.
"The community development movement was a very important link between city government and residents, to the extent that it spurred discussion amongst stakeholders and groups such as aggrieved citizens," he says.
"Just the fact that there's a lot more talking going on now than there was in 1967 is an important lesson."
The state also passed the Michigan Fair Housing Act to fight housing discrimination and Detroit elected its first black mayor, Coleman Young, in 1973.
These lessons are more important than ever as the city undertakes a massive revitalisation effort, accelerated by young entrepreneurs returning to the city, Mr Stoudamire says.
"Detroit is not a blank canvas. You don't build on top or around people, you build with people," he says.
"That's why we're trying to use this as a catalyst to move forward. Our identity doesn't need to be recalibrated, but our stories need to be told."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40711211
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Pakistan village council orders 'revenge rape' of girl - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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A teenager in Multan is raped by order of a village council after her brother was accused of rape.
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Asia
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A villager points to the house where a teenage girl was raped in Muzaffarabad, Multan
Some 20 people from Multan, Pakistan, have been arrested for ordering the rape of a teenage girl, in revenge for a rape her brother allegedly committed.
Police said the families of the two girls are related.
Members of both had joined forces to decide what should be done.
"A jirga [village council] had ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl as punishment, as her brother had raped a 12-year-old," police official Allah Baksh told AFP.
He said the village council was approached earlier this month by a man who said his 12-year-old sister had been raped by their cousin.
The council then ordered the complainant to rape the sister of the accused in return - which police say he did.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that the girl was forced to appear before the group and raped in front of them and her parents.
The mothers of the two girls later filed complaints at the local police station.
Medical examinations have confirmed rape in both cases.
Reports suggest the second girl was raped in front of the family council
Another officer, Ahsan Younas, told BBC Urdu that the first girl to be raped was aged between 12 and 14. The victim of the revenge rape is said to be 16 or 17.
He said police had registered a complaint against 25 people, and that the suspect accused of raping the 12-year-old was still at large.
While some reports say the group that ordered the rape was a jirga - or village council - BBC sources said it was actually formed by members of the two families.
Jirgas, a kind of council formed of local elders, often settle disputes in rural Pakistan. However, they are illegal and have been condemned for a series of controversial rulings - including ordering so-called "honour killings" and past incidents of "revenge rape".
In 2002, a jirga ordered the gang rape of 28-year-old Mukhtar Mai, whose 12-year-old brother was accused of an affair with an older woman.
Mukhtar Mai, pictured in 2011, was gang-raped by order of a tribal council
Ms Mai took her rapists to court - an act of extraordinary courage in Pakistan, where sexual assault victims still face considerable stigma.
When their convictions were overturned by Pakistan's Supreme Court, she was offered many ways out of the country. However, she chose to stay in her village and start a girls' school and a women's refuge yards away from where she was raped.
Ms Mai is now a prominent women's rights activist, and her story inspired an opera, "Thumbprint", which opened in New York in 2014.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-40731035
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Switzerland's Lavertezzo overrun with tourists after video goes viral - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Village dubbed the "Maldives of Milan" is being turned into an "open air toilet", residents say.
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Europe
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The video (in Italian) showing the river next to Lavertezzo, in Switzerland, has gone viral
Most people would be delighted if their home town was compared to the Maldives, one of the world's top beauty spots.
But not, it seems, those living in the village of Lavertezzo, Switzerland.
Residents here are thoroughly fed up with a recent influx of tourists, who they accuse of turning their idyllic valley into "an open air toilet".
This latest stream of tourists were all apparently inspired by a minute-long video, which has been watched 2.6m times so far, dubbing the area "the Maldives of Milan".
In it, filmmaker Marco Capedri and his friend Federico Sambruni frolic in the crystal clear waters of the Verzasca river, in the shadow of an imposing double-arched stone bridge.
"A magnificent canyon crossed with emerald waters - one hour from Milan and 45 minutes from Varese," Mr Capedri's post proclaimed.
With that, Lavertezzo's residents - who are no strangers to tourists - found themselves overwhelmed by Italians crossing the border in search of a taste of paradise.
"I thought the valley had exploded," one resident told Ticino News [in Italian].
Another accused the tourists, who came from all over, of turning the valley into "an outdoor toilet" and "running semi-naked down the street". The reporter, meanwhile, noted the "socks, cigarettes and cans" left behind by the day-trippers.
The town's mayor, Roberto Bacciarini, was more circumspect in his response.
Speaking to Italian newspaper Repubblica [in Italian], he admitted the video had done "a good job" in attracting people to the area, but added: "[Mr Capedri] would do us a favour if he asked his compatriots to park their cars in an orderly manner, and respect the rules of the place."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40730546
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Brexit: Johnson, Davis and Fox push agenda on three continents - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis will set out the UK's agenda in Australia, Mexico and Germany.
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UK Politics
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David Davis, Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, pictured at the Tory Party conference, were dubbed the "three Brexiteers"
Senior cabinet ministers will push the UK's Brexit agenda on three different continents later.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox will travel from the US to meet Mexican counterparts to discuss trading relationships.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is on a two-day tour of Australia, saying post-Brexit trade is "top of the agenda".
And Brexit Secretary David Davis will hold private talks in Germany ahead of the next round of negotiations.
The globetrotting by the three ministers - dubbed the "three Brexiteers" for their role in backing a Leave vote - comes amid increased scrutiny of the opportunities and challenges facing Britain in terms of negotiating free trade agreements with other countries once it leaves the EU.
No deals can be done until withdrawal in March 2019 but the UK has established a series of inter-ministerial working groups in the US and Australia to discuss the way ahead while also signalling to other countries, such as New Zealand, that they will be "near the front of the queue".
US President Donald Trump has said a deal with the UK could be "big and exciting" in terms of jobs, accusing the EU of a "very protectionist" stance towards America.
The EU has insisted Brexit talks will only be held by the European Commission, and the Department for Exiting the European Union confirmed Mr Davis' talks with officials in Germany would be private.
Brussels has also made clear that trade talks between the UK and the EU must wait until other issues, including the status of expats and any "divorce bill" to be paid by the UK, have been settled.
The role of the European Court of Justice has emerged as a stumbling block to a deal on citizen's rights, despite both sides insisting that they want to come an arrangement.
The UK is seeking a "comprehensive free trade deal" with the EU after Brexit to replace its membership of the common market and customs union.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40716323
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Letter from Africa: Freed Boko Haram 'wives' return to captors - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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In our series of letters from African journalists, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani considers why women abducted by Boko Haram and then released would choose to return to their captors.
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Africa
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Aisha was showered with expensive gifts by the militant who took her as his wife
In our series of letters from African journalists, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani looks at why some Nigerian women have gone back to the militant Islamists who abducted them.
When news emerged that some of the Chibok schoolgirls, abducted by Boko Haram in 2014, had declined to return home with the batch of 82 freed in May, the world found it difficult to believe.
Not even the release of a Boko Haram video showing some hijab-clad, Kalashnikov-wielding girls saying they were happy in their new lives, was enough to convince people. "They must have been coerced," some said.
"It must be Stockholm syndrome," others said. What else could explain why any girl, any woman, would choose to remain with such horrible men?
Yet, some women rescued by the Nigerian military from captivity are willingly returning to Boko Haram's Sambisa forest hideout in north-eastern Nigeria to be with these same horrible men.
In January, I met Aisha Yerima, 25, who was kidnapped by Boko Haram more than four years ago. While in captivity, she got married to a commander who showered her with romance, expensive gifts and Arabic love songs.
The fairytale life in the Sambisa forest she described to me was suddenly cut short by the appearance of the Nigerian military in early 2016, at a time her husband had gone off to battle with other commanders.
When I first interviewed Aisha, she had been in government custody for about eight months, and completed a de-radicalisation programme run by psychologist Fatima Akilu, the executive director of the Neem Foundation and founder of the Nigerian government's de-radicalisation programme.
"I now see that all the things Boko Haram told us were lies," Aisha said. "Now, when I listen to them on the radio, I laugh."
But, in May, less than five months after being released into the care of her family in north-eastern Maiduguri city, she returned to the forest hideout of Boko Haram.
The Nigerian military have been battling Boko Haram since 2009
Over the past five years, Dr Akilu has worked with former Boko Haram members - including some commanders, their wives and children - and with hundreds of women who were rescued from captivity.
"How women were treated when in Boko Haram captivity depends on which camp a woman was exposed to. It depends on the commander running the camp," she said.
"Those who were treated better were the ones who willingly married Boko Haram members or who joined the group voluntarily and that's not the majority. Most women did not have the same treatment."
Aisha had boasted to me about the number of slaves she had while in the Sambisa forest, the respect she received from other Boko Haram commanders, and the strong influence she had over her husband. She even accompanied him to battle once.
"These were women who for the most part had never worked, had no power, no voice in the communities, and all of a sudden they were in charge of between 30 to 100 women who were now completely under their control and at their beck and call," Dr Akilu said.
"It is difficult to know what to replace it with when you return to society because most of the women are returning to societies where they are not going to be able to wield that kind of power."
Apart from loss of power, other reasons Dr Akilu believes could lead women to willingly return to Boko Haram include stigmatisation from a community which treats them like pariahs because of their association with the militants, and tough economic conditions.
Dealing with the aftermath of release can be a struggle for some of those who were abducted
"De-radicalisation is just one part of it. Reintegration is also a part of it. Some of them have no livelihood support built around them," Dr Akilu said.
"The kind of support you have in de-radicalisation programmes does not follow you when you leave. They often come out successful from de-radicalisation programmes but they struggle in the community and it is that struggle that often leads them to go back," she said.
Recently, I visited Aisha's family, who were still in shock at her departure and worried about her wellbeing.
Her mother, Ashe, recalled at least seven former Boko Haram "wives" she knew, all friends of her daughter, who had returned to the Sambisa forest long before her daughter did.
"Each time one of them disappeared, her family came to our house to ask Aisha if she had heard from their daughter," she said. "That's how I knew."
Some of the women kept in touch with Aisha after they returned to Boko Haram. Her younger sister, Bintu, was present during at least two phone calls.
"They told her to come and join them but she refused," Bintu said. "She told them she didn't want to go back."
Unlike some former Boko Haram "wives" I've met, who are either struggling to survive harsh economic conditions or dealing with stigma, Aisha's life seemed to be on track.
She was earning money from buying and selling fabric, regularly attending social events and posting photos of herself all primped up on social media, and had a string of suitors.
"At least five different men wanted to marry her," her mother said, pointing out that there could be no greater form of acceptance shown to a woman, and presenting this as evidence that her daughter faced no stigma whatsoever from the community.
"One of the men lives in Lagos. She was thinking of marrying him," she said.
But, everything went awry when Aisha received yet another phone call from the women who had returned to the forest, informing her that her Boko Haram "husband" was now with a woman who had been her rival.
From that day, the vivacious and gregarious Aisha became a recluse.
"She stopped going out or talking or eating," Bintu said. "She was always sad."
Two weeks later, she left home and did not return. Some of her clothes were missing. Her phones were switched off. She took the two-year-old son fathered by the commander in the Sambisa forest, but left the older one she had with the husband she divorced before her abduction.
"De-radicalisation is complicated by the fact that we have an active, ongoing insurgency. In cases where a group has reached settlement with the government and laid down their arms, it is easier," Dr Akilu said. "But, when you have fathers, husbands, sons still in the movement, they want to be reunited, especially women."
Asta, another former Boko Haram "wife", told me that she has heard of the many women returning to the group, but has no plans to do so herself.
However, the 19-year-old described how terribly she misses her husband, and how keen she is to hear from him and to be reunited with him.
She insisted that she would not return to the forest, not even if he were to ask her.
"I will tell him to come and stay here with us and live a normal life," she said.
But as with Aisha, the desire to be with the man she yearns for may turn out to be more compelling for Asta than the aversion to a group responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in north-east Nigeria, and for the displacement of millions who are struggling to survive in refugee camps.
Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa, on Instagram at bbcafrica or email africalive@bbc.co.uk
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40704569
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Divorcee destroys ex's $1m violin collection in Japan - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Divorces often break a heart or two - but in this case, an extra 54 violins were left in tatters.
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Asia
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Divorces are known to break a heart or two but in one case in Japan, an extra 54 violins were left in tatters.
A woman has been arrested for destroying her former partner's violin collection and 70 bows, together worth 105.9m yen ($950,700, £770,000).
The 34-year-old suspect broke into his apartment in Nagoya and wrecked the instruments, police said.
The incident took place in 2014 in the midst of their breakup but the woman has only just been arrested.
Her 62-year-old former husband is said to have been both a maker and collector of violins.
The most valuable instrument among the 54 casualties was an Italian-made violin worth 50m yen, the Kyodo news agency said.
According to Japanese media, the woman is a Chinese national and was arrested on Tuesday upon returning from China to Tokyo.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-40724397
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Thieves target West Bromwich DIY SOS volunteers - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Vans used by builders helping transform the home of a family affected by cancer are targeted by thieves.
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Birmingham & Black Country
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Volunteers helping Nick Knowles on the DIY SOS show had their vans broken into
Thieves broke into vans and stole tools being used by a team working on a life-changing project for TV show DIY SOS.
Builders working on the BBC programme were targeted while helping with the project in West Bromwich. Show bosses said three vans have been hit in the past week.
Volunteers are transforming the family home of a mother who died from cancer.
Presenter Nick Knowles tweeted on Wednesday to say he was "really disappointed" by the thefts.
The programme is extending the home of Sandra Chambers, who has looked after her two grandchildren since the death of their mother Crystal in October 2015.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Crystal Chambers' family are being helped by the TV show
Show bosses said two vans - a Peugeot and a Ford - were broken into on Wednesday morning and tools taken.
On Thursday a Mercedes Sprinter was also broken into, but nothing was stolen. The thefts have been reported to West Midlands Police.
This Twitter post cannot be displayed in your browser. Please enable Javascript or try a different browser. View original content on Twitter The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Skip twitter post by Nick Knowles This article contains content provided by Twitter. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read Twitter’s cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue’. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
Mr Knowles' tweet prompted a local Peugeot dealership to get in touch and he later thanked them for their help, as well as another person who gave £30 to cover repairs.
The project to extend the house is being completed by the DIY SOS team and an army of volunteers, including local tradespeople and neighbours, in a nine-day build.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-40729647
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The ex-Jehovah's Witnesses shunned by their families - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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For many ex-believers, leaving the religion means they can no longer speak to their children or parents.
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UK
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For some former Jehovah's Witnesses, leaving the faith is not just the mark of losing your religion - it can also mean losing your loved ones. In many cases, friends and family are told to cut all ties with ex-believers, leaving them isolated and sometimes suicidal.
"I don't speak to any of my family," Sarah - not her real name - tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme.
"Because of being 'disfellowshipped', I can have no contact."
Last year, Sarah - in her 20s - was excluded by the Jehovah's Witnesses in a process known as "disfellowshipping", she says sparked by her refusal to live in an abusive relationship.
She claims her partner at the time had been violent towards her, at one stage leaving her with broken ribs.
Going to the police - and involving those from outside the religion - is heavily discouraged by Jehovah's Witnesses, she says, claiming that elders within the faith refused to punish her ex-partner's behaviour.
It was only when work colleagues noticed the bruising, and convinced her not to put up with the abuse, that she says she fled the relationship.
Sarah claims she was consequently disfellowshipped by the religion, and that her friends and family cut all ties with her.
This is because Jehovah's Witnesses believe those outside the religion can be of detriment to their faith.
In a statement the religious group told the BBC: "If a baptised Witness makes a practice of breaking the Bible's moral code, and does not given evidence of stopping the practice, he or she will be shunned or disfellowshipped.
"When it comes to shunning, Witnesses take their instructions from the Bible and on this subject the Bible clearly states, 'Remove the wicked man from amongst yourselves.'"
The night she was disfellowshipped, Sarah says her mother refused to talk to her. Her father woke her up at 07:00 to kick her out of their home.
Responding to Sarah's claims, the Jehovah's Witnesses said that while it could not comment on individual cases, "violence, whether physical or emotional, is strongly condemned in the Bible and has no place in a Christian family".
Sarah and John (front of shot) told Victoria Derbyshire they had been shunned by their family and friends
John - not his real name - became a Jehovah's Witness as a young child when his parents decided to join the religious group.
But two years ago, he was disfellowshipped after he missed a Jehovah's Witness memorial service - seen in the religion as an important event.
He had also begun to privately have doubts about some of the religion's teachings - questioning the faith's assertion that the end of the world is imminent, and that only 144,000 human beings will go to heaven.
His view on the religion was also tarnished after ones of his friends died, when a blood transfusion - which is not allowed in the faith - might have saved him.
"It was a waste of a life," he says.
John says he later discovered his wife had testified against him during the process that led to his disfellowship, which he believes placed a great strain on their relationship.
He left the family home - living temporarily in tents and caravans.
"It was a very isolating time. I didn't have anyone, I felt quite suicidal," he says.
He has now lost contact with his two adult children and siblings.
"Sometimes I send them a message saying, 'I love you, I'm still thinking of you.' But usually there's no response," he says.
Terri O'Sullivan was kicked out of her home by her mother
According to the Jehovah's Witnesses, the faith has more than 138,000 members in the UK, and more than eight million internationally.
Terri O'Sullivan left the religion 17 years ago, aged 21, and was kicked out of her home by her mother.
She now runs a support network for those who leave or are excluded from it.
She says she is yet to find a former Jehovah's Witness who has not experienced depression, alcoholism, suicidal feelings or self-harm.
She adds that while not everyone goes through a formal disfellowship when they leave, their relationships seldom go on unaffected.
"With some ex-Witnesses," she says, "some of their families will still talk to them - but it will always be strained."
Sarah says the loss of her closest family ties has been "very, very difficult" to cope with.
She is engaged, and aware she is "having to plan a wedding where your parents won't attend".
"I would class myself as an orphan, which is quite sad," she says.
Her support network comes from her friends at work. When she left the faith, she says, they "rallied around" her, in contrast to what she had expected.
"These people I'd been told [by the religion] were awful, were bad association, and God was going to smite them all at Armageddon.
"Yet these people opened up their homes."
Sarah is still, however, complimentary about most of the people within her former faith.
"There are good people in the religion, who believe they are saving people's lives [by spreading the faith's message]," she says.
"I look back with some happy memories, because they were the last memories I have with my family and siblings.
"But then I do have to look back and feel a lot of heartbreak that I'm never going to be able to sit down with them for a Sunday meal again.
"When they die, I probably won't be invited to the funeral either."
Watch the Victoria Derbyshire programme on weekdays between 09:00 and 11:00 on BBC Two and the BBC News channel.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40704990
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The extraordinary life of a 91-year-old beauty queen - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Krystyna Farley is a pageant star in the US state of Connecticut, but her life was not always this glamorous.
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Magazine
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Krystyna Farley is a 91-year-old beauty pageant queen in the US state of Connecticut, but her life was not always this glamorous. Although she grew up in a loving home in rural Poland, her childhood was cut short by the outbreak of war. This is her story.
"My skin is beautiful," Krystyna Farley says. "So I don't wear any makeup, just lipstick - that's all."
Krystyna, who will soon turn 92, has spent the last year as the incumbent Ms Connecticut Senior America.
"People think that if you're over 60 you're finished - it's not true," Krystyna says, describing what she likes about beauty pageants.
"You're showing people you are still alive and you still can do it - you can dance, you can sew, you can paint, you can do anything you want."
Krystyna's optimism and joie de vivre is all the more remarkable, bearing in mind the harrowing experiences of her teenage years.
She was born in eastern Poland in 1925, the second of five children. Her family lived on 35 acres of land her father had been given in return for his military service during World War One, in a house surrounded by cherry trees.
"That life was terrific because we didn't have any worries," Krystyna remembers. "We were young and we always had a good time."
Krystyna with her cousin in 1938
But when Krystyna was 14 Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland - triggering World War Two.
"In 1940 there was a knock on the door," Krystyna says.
Krystyna and her family, like hundreds of thousands of other Polish people, were rounded up on a bitingly cold night by the Russian military and Ukrainian police and bundled into cattle trains for a month-long journey into the frozen forests of the Ural mountains.
"The train had no windows," Krystyna says. "There was a hole for the bathroom and there was a coal stove in the corner, and that was about it. There were about 60 people in each carriage and all we had to eat was bread."
Krystyna's family were put to work harvesting timber in a Russian labour camp on a starvation diet.
"We didn't think about anything else apart from food," Krystyna remembers. "We had nothing to eat, just black bread."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Krystyna Farley explains her life-affirming philosophy to Outlook on the BBC World Service
The family spent two dreadful years there, until Germany attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Stalin, in need of as many allies as he could find, then suddenly released tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war, including Krystyna and her family.
Krystyna's father, Andrzej, along with many thousands of others, joined a new army, the Polish Army in Exile. But all of the women and children were left behind and since Hitler had now invaded eastern Poland they couldn't return to their homes.
Krystyna, her mother Walentyna, and siblings squeezed on to a boat full of sick, malnourished deportees and sailed across the Caspian Sea, to find work picking cotton near the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
There their diet expanded to include flat bread, blackberries, hard cheese and dried melon. But life was still very hard, so Walentyna made the heart-breaking decision to send her children - with the exception of her eldest child, Alice, who was too old - to the safety of the Persian orphanages set up by the Polish Army in Exile.
To reach Iran the children travelled by boat across the Caspian and then joined a convoy of lorries on the journey south to Tehran. They did not know then that they would never see their mother or eldest sister again.
After the dismal conditions they had endured in Russia and Uzbekistan, life in Tehran was much improved. There were clean beds and there was plenty of food - but Krystyna fell terribly ill.
Believed to be dead, her body was sent to the mortuary, where only by chance a nurse saw Krystyna move and realised that she was still alive.
"I had pneumonia in two sides of my lungs," Krystyna says. "I was half dead, so I don't remember too much in Tehran."
When she recovered, Krystyna arranged for her brothers, Teddy and Chester, to join the cadets and sent sister, Natalie, who was just eight, to an orphanage in Africa. Then she enlisted in the Polish Army in Exile.
"I wanted to be in the army to drive a car," she explains. "That was my own stupidity - you see if you're young, you're stupid."
Krystyna visited Jerusalem with her father’s division in 1943 - Krystyna is 5th from the left on the top row, Andrzej is on the far right of the second row from the front
Krystyna was about to turn 18, but lied about her age, as 19 was the minimum age to join the army. However, she wasn't selected to become a military driver, and instead was sent to train as a nurse's aide in Iraq.
Krystyna's five years of military service - for which she received a King George medal - took her to Egypt, and then to Iraq, where she was reunited with her father. Later they were both stationed in Jerusalem together.
"That was a very nice feeling, but you see, if you're young you really just think about food and money, not family," Krystyna admits.
"So I came to my father and I just said, 'Pops, do you have some money?' And I looked in his pocket and he had plenty, so I took some because we just wanted to buy ourselves makeup and stuff like that."
Krystyna and her father were among the troops who crossed the Mediterranean under constant threat from Nazi bombers to join the battle at the hilltop monastery of Monte Cassino, south of Rome.
While patching up the injured and mutilated soldiers coming off the mountain Krystyna met a man who was to become her first husband - a soldier called Stanley Slowikowski - who was sent to her ward with a leg injury.
When the war ended Krystyna and Stanley settled in England, and it was here that Krystyna's family were all finally reunited - her father, brothers and younger sister.
Krystyna later learned that her mother had died from malaria. Nothing was ever heard of her elder sister, Alice, who had also stayed behind in Uzbekistan.
"I think my sister is still alive, if she's healthy like I am," Krystyna says.
Krystyna and Stanley had three children together but Stanley drank heavily, possibly as a result of his experiences in the war, and Krystyna was widowed in 1949, leaving her with three young children and very little money.
She began to teach children the dances that she had learned as a child, and in 1953 her dance troupe was invited to perform at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, wearing costumes that Krystyna had designed and made.
Dressed to dance for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953 – Krystyna is second from the left on the front row
Before she left the UK, Krystyna had another child, Elizabeth. The father had proposed marriage, but she wasn't ready to marry again, and says that a sense of curiosity took her to the US, where she arrived in 1955 with a fur coat on her back, a few hundred dollars in her pocket and four young children by her side.
There Krystyna built a new life for herself and her children, working for many years as a dental hygienist.
With her children, George, Little Krystyna, Elizabeth, and Alice in New Britain, Connecticut in 1955
She remarried in 1956 and had another daughter, named Eva.
It wasn't until she was in her late 50s, though, that Krystyna met the man who she describes as the love of her life, Ed Farley. They married in 1979 and have been inseparable ever since.
Krystyna is very active in the Polish community in Connecticut.
"I joined all kinds of clubs," she says. "I was teaching children Polish folk dances, and I took groups to Poland to the international dance festival."
But late in life she also embraced the very American tradition of beauty pageants, entering the Ms Connecticut Senior America competition for the first time at the age of 70.
That time she was second runner-up. At her next attempt, a few years later, she was first runner-up. At her third attempt, in 2016, she was crowned queen.
"You have to have a regular dress, you have to have a talent, then you have a gown, and you have to talk about your philosophy of life," Krystyna explains.
"I have three or four different talents - I can read poetry, I can dance, I can do Carmen Miranda," she says, referring to the singer famous for Chica Chica Boom Chic.
"And my philosophy of life is to love everybody and be good to everybody."
She adds: "You have to love people and be with people, because if you don't have people around you, you're a dead pigeon."
In last year's Ms Senior America finals, Krystyna competed against 44 other state queens - and lost to a woman roughly 30 years her junior.
Krystyna, left, with all the finalists at the 2016 Ms Senior America pageant
She handed on her Ms Senior Connecticut crown to 2017's queen back in May and, with her 92nd birthday approaching on 19 August, she says now may be the time to hang up her tiara for good.
"No more pageants for me," she says.
But with nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and a fifth on the way, she still has plenty to keep her busy.
"Right now I'm dressed, I have earrings on - I'm always ready for something to happen," Krystyna says.
"Sure, nothing is happening, but I'm always ready."
Listen to Krystyna Farley talking about her philosophy of life on Outlook, on the BBC World Service
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-40709840
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Premier League wins anti-piracy court order - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Ruling will allow the league to combat the illicit use of devices such as pre-loaded IPTV and Kodi boxes.
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Business
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The Premier League has been awarded a High Court order for the forthcoming 2017-18 season, which will help it combat the illegal streaming of games.
The blocking order will require UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent people from illegally accessing streams of its matches.
It will allow the league to combat the illicit sale and use of devices such as pre-loaded IPTV and Kodi boxes.
A similar order was obtained for the final two months of the 2016-17 season.
That saw more than 5,000 server IP addresses blocked that had previously been streaming Premier League content.
Sky and BT Sport hold the live rights for Premier League football. The two firms paid a record £5.136bn for rights to show live matches for three seasons.
Kodi is free software, built by volunteers, that is designed to bring videos, music, games and photographs together in one easy-to-use application.
Some shops sell set-top boxes and TV sticks known as Kodi boxes, preloaded with the software.
The developers behind Kodi say their software does not contain any content of its own and is designed to play legally owned media or content "freely available" on the internet.
However, the software can be modified with third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated copies of films and TV series, or provide free access to subscription television channels and programmes, including sports events.
The English top flight League is currently undertaking its biggest ever copyright protection programme.
Its anti-piracy efforts have also contributed to a range of prominent apps and add-ons being closed down as the law catches up with them.
"This blocking order is a game-changer in our efforts to tackle the supply and use of illicit streams of our content," said Premier League Director of Legal Services, Kevin Plumb.
"It will allow us to quickly and effectively block and disrupt the illegal broadcast of Premier League football via any means, including so called 'pre-loaded Kodi boxes'.
"The protection of our copyright, and the investment made by our broadcast partners, is hugely important to the Premier League and the future health of English football."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40727972
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UK economic growth rate edges slightly higher - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Stronger service sector offsets weaker manufacturing and construction growth in three months to June.
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Business
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A stronger UK film industry helped the service sector to expand, the ONS said.
UK economic growth edged slightly higher in the three months to June, as a stronger service sector offset weaker manufacturing and construction.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the economy expanded by 0.3% in the quarter, up from 0.2% in the previous three months.
But the ONS added there had been a "notable slowdown" from last year.
Within the service sector, the retail and the film industries helped underpin growth, the ONS said.
"While services such as retail, and film production and distribution showed some improvement in the second quarter, a weaker performance from construction and manufacturing pulled down overall growth," said Darren Morgan, ONS head of national accounts.
Although the economy eked out higher growth in the second quarter, it was below levels seen in the final three months of 2016, when gross domestic product grew by 0.7%.
Analysts said the latest ONS data, which is an initial estimate, diminished the chances of an interest rate rise any time soon.
Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, said: "The confirmation of the lacklustre performance of the economy so far this year surely also diminishes the chance of an interest rate hike any time soon, especially as growth prospects for coming months have become increasingly skewed to the downside."
Film production in the UK, plus box-office receipts from cinemas, was one of the best performing parts of the economy during the April-June period.
The ONS said ticket receipts from Wonder Woman and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film were among the items that had boosted the sector it calls motion picture activities.
That sector grew 8% in the second quarter.
Chancellor Philip Hammond said the UK economy had now grown consistently for four-and-a-half years.
"We can be proud of that, but we are not complacent," he added.
"We need to focus on restoring productivity growth to deliver higher wages and living standards for people across the country."
Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: "Growth for the first half of 2017 is below expectations, and it follows continued data showing working families are being squeezed with wages not keeping up with prices."
Aberdeen Asset Management chief economist Lucy O'Carroll said: "This pick-up will be taken as good news, but it really doesn't amount to much.
"The figures are the first estimate of growth, based on very patchy data. They always get revised over time, and often substantially so.
"It's the underlying trends that matter. They don't look favourable at the moment, given the uncertainties around Brexit and the pressure on household budgets from higher inflation."
The construction sector weakened in the second quarter, according to the ONS.
That was backed up by Andrew Sweeney, from Care Building Services. He told the BBC: "We seem to be pricing a lot more projects. We price projects for clients; we have estimators in the office. After we've priced it the clients pull it because it is coming over the budget.
"We've been given orders for jobs and at the last minute the clients have pulled them away from us due to concerns over the market."
Kallum Pickering, senior UK economist at Berenberg, said the UK's growth in the first half of the year had been its slowest since 2013.
He added: "Whereas growth has accelerated significantly so far this year in continental Europe and many emerging markets, the UK is missing out.
"While the downside risks from the Brexit vote have not yet played out in a major way, the uncertainty stemming from Brexit is leading to caution in all areas of spending and policy that have long-term implications.
"The UK would probably be growing at 2.5% or above this year were it not for Brexit, with strong gains in real wages and more business investment."
The latest growth figure was in line with economists' expectations, and is unlikely to change expectations that, at its policy meeting next week, the Bank of England will keep interest rates at their current record low.
On Monday, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its forecast for UK economic growth this year because of the weak first-quarter figure.
The IMF said it expects UK GDP to grow by 1.7% instead of its previous projection of 2%.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40726833
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France wildfires force mass evacuation - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Wildfires in south-eastern France force the evacuation of 10,000 people during the night, officials say.
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Europe
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "We're still not out of the woods yet" - tourist who witnessed the wildfires
Wildfires in south-eastern France have forced the evacuation of 10,000 people overnight, officials say.
Hundreds of firefighters have been deployed to battle the fires near Bormes-les-Mimosas, in the country's Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
France earlier asked its EU neighbours for more help fighting the fires.
Some 4,000 hectares (15.4 sq miles) of land have burned along the Mediterranean coast, in the mountainous interior and on the island of Corsica.
"The evacuations, at least 10,000, followed the progression of the fire," a fire official was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
"It's an area that doubles or triples its population in summer," the official added.
At least 10,000 people have been evacuated after wildfires swept through south-eastern France
Some 4,000 hectares (15.4 sq miles) of land have burned along the Mediterranean coast
One of the worst fires is raging in an area near the popular resort of Saint-Tropez.
In Corsica, hundreds of homes have been evacuated.
Overall, more than 4,000 firefighters and troops backed by water bombers have been trying to extinguish the flames since Monday.
At least 12 firefighters have been injured and 15 police officers affected by smoke inhalation, officials say.
Water bombers have been deployed to battle the fires
More than 4,000 firefighters have been deployed
Lisa Minot, a British tourist staying in a campsite near St-Tropez, told the BBC that all tourists were evacuated at about 02:00 local time (00:00 GMT) and spent the night on the beach as it was not safe to stay in the wooded campsite.
She said that as many as 3,000 people - including tourists from other campsites - ended up staying on the beach in cold winds.
"People are just very tired," Ms Minot said, adding that there very young children among the evacuees.
Water bombers have been tackling the blaze since Monday
These homes came close to being destroyed
She said she saw planes scooping up water from the sea and then going back "into the pool of black smoke" on the coast.
Ms Minot added that there were reports that some campsites had already been destroyed by the blazes.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40725294
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Armed boy tipped over car with fork-lift truck - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The 15-year-old admitted possessing a firearm, aggravated vehicle taking and careless driving.
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Oxford
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A 15-year-old boy has admitted tipping over a car with a fork-lift truck while armed with an air rifle.
A police helicopter was scrambled when reports emerged of a truck "driving erratically" around Hazel Gardens in Sonning Common in September last year.
The boy told Oxford Magistrates' Court court: "It probably wasn't the best thing to have done."
He admitted aggravated vehicle taking, possessing an unloaded firearm, and careless driving.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A member of the public filmed the boy on the fork-lift
The magistrates heard the teenager stole the vehicle from Oliver Agriculture in Cane End, near Reading, and drove it two-and-a-half miles to Sonning Common.
There he wrote off a Fiat Punto by tipping it on to its side, a prosecutor said.
Chairman of the magistrates Colin Mcguire described the fork-lift truck as "a lethal machine" and asked the Youth Justice Service to carry out a report.
The teenager from Henley-on-Thames, who cannot be named for legal reasons, will be sentenced on 16 August.
The Fiat Punto was written off
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-40728251
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Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley wins £15m court case - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The offer made during a "drink-fuelled" meeting was "wishful thinking" by Jeffrey Blue, judge says.
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England
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Mike Ashley was described in court as a "power drinker"
Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley has won a High Court battle with an investment banker over a £15m deal allegedly made in a pub.
Jeffrey Blue told the court Newcastle United's owner reneged on a promise to pay him a multimillion-pound sum if he increased the firm's share price.
The court heard about "drink-fuelled" meetings in pubs, including one where Mr Ashley "vomited into a fireplace".
Mr Ashley's lawyers said he had won a "comprehensive" victory.
The hearing was told that four years ago Mr Ashley met Mr Blue and three other finance specialists at the Horse and Groom in London and "consumed a lot of alcohol".
Mr Ashley said: "I can't remember the details of the conversations that we had in the pub as it was a heavy night of drinking.
"If I did say to Mr Blue that I would pay him £15m if he could increase [Sports Direct's] share price to £8, it would be obvious to everyone, including Mr Blue, that I wasn't being serious."
He said he paid Mr Blue £1m in "other deals" unrelated to the Horse and Groom meeting.
Mr Blue described Mr Ashley as a "serious businessman", but said the work ethic at Derbyshire-based Sports Direct was "like nothing else I have ever seen" with business conducted "in unorthodox ways and in unusual venues".
The £14m High Court case between Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley and a banker offered a revealing insight into how business is done in some quarters.
Stories of monster drinking sessions, kebabs and vomiting into a fireplace emerged as financial expert Jeffrey Blue tried to get Ashley to cough up.
He claimed the Sports Direct founder had promised him the money in a deal struck in a pub, but Ashley said the conversation was no more than a joke.
And a judge has now agreed no-one could have thought he was being serious.
The judge said that during the Horse and Groom meeting Mr Ashley promised him £15m, but Sports Direct chairman Keith Hellawell said Mr Blue only mentioned the figure of £1m to him.
Ruling in Mr Ashley's favour, judge Justice Leggatt said: "No reasonable person present... would have thought that the offer to pay Mr Blue £15m was serious and was intended to create a contract.
"They all thought it was a joke. The fact that Mr Blue has since convinced himself that the offer was a serious one, and that a legally binding agreement was made, shows only that the human capacity for wishful thinking knows few bounds."
He ordered that Mr Blue would have to pick up Mr Ashley's legal bill of £1.5m, as well as his own of "one million odd".
In a statement after the ruling Mr Ashley said: "The only reason the Sports Direct share price exceeded £8, and will hopefully do so again, is because of the sterling efforts of all the people who work at Sports Direct."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40727521
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Newspaper headlines: Riviera inferno and 'new antibiotics rule' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Photos of the wildfires in France feature widely, alongside reports doctors are being urged to change their advice on antibiotics.
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The Papers
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There are dramatic images on several front pages of people fleeing the wildfires in south-eastern France by grabbing a few belongings and making for the beach at Bormes-Les-Mimosas.
One woman tells the Daily Telegraph "all we had time to bring was our passports". The paper says dozens of British holidaymakers were preparing for another night sleeping on the sand.
The Daily Mail shows some of those who escaped what it calls the "inferno on the Riviera", covered in blankets and using bags as pillows.
The Sun's travel editor, Lisa Minot, who was among those evacuated from a campsite, writes the British mantra of "keep calm and carry on has turned into despair" as many holidaymakers are likely to lose their cars and possessions.
According to the Times, those caught up in the chaos have been left "with little idea of whether their insurance would cover the disruption". It says the fires have been propelled by strong winds through pine-covered hillsides and officials in Provence believe they were started deliberately.
The government's strategy for tackling air pollution comes under intense scrutiny.
The Daily Telegraph reports that experts predict another 10,000 wind turbines will have to be built to meet the demand of electric-only cars.
For the Sun it is not enough to "blithely announce" a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars "without a co-ordinated, costed national plan for achieving it".
The Guardian warns the government could face further legal action "to force it to produce a more comprehensive plan, with environmentalists, doctors and opposition politicians arguing it is insufficient to deal with a 'health emergency' estimated to be killing 40 thousand people a year".
The paper's environment editor, Damian Carrington, condemns the proposals as a "smokescreen" that hides the "true villains" - car manufacturers. He says they've "dodged the emissions regulations that would have kept air pollution in check".
The Daily Telegraph leads with the call for GPs to be urged to stop telling patients to complete their full course of antibiotics.
Infectious disease experts welcome it, saying that the current guidance is based on a fear of under-treating, but actually increases the risk of bacterial resistance.
The story also features on the front page of the Guardian and Times.
However, the Royal College of GPs expresses concern that advising patients to take the medication only until they feel better would lead to confusion.
The front page report in the i newspaper suggests the "era of designer babies" is a step closer, with scientists in the US succeeding in altering genes in IVF embryos.
It says new technology has been employed to "correct" the genes responsible for inherited disease and could, in theory, be used to enhance those that produce traits such as better eyesight or stronger muscles.
The Times reports the suspected rape of an autistic man by another resident at a private care home was not made public by the regulator, the Care Quality Commission.
It says the incident was left out of a report, produced after an inspection of the home in north London.
The Care Quality Commission defends its decision, explaining that it has to balance its desire to be "open and transparent" with the need to avoid "compromising ongoing investigations".
The chairman of ITV is said by the Daily Mirror to have insisted he will "never discuss" how much the channel's stars earn.
The paper says the intervention of Sir Peter Bazalgette comes as the presenter of Good Morning Britain, Piers Morgan, has been challenged by his BBC rival, Dan Walker, to reveal whether his salary is the same as that of his co-host, Susanna Reid.
Finally, the Daily Mail examines one man who can boast impressive muscles - the world champion swimmer Adam Peaty.
It details the physical attributes that have propelled him from "a lad who used to be afraid of water" to a record-breaker.
His size 12 feet and his double-jointed knees, which help with power and flexibility; his body fat of a mere 6%; and his 46-inch chest, which allows him to lift 30% more than his bodyweight.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-40735826
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Should you finish a course of antibiotics? - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Experts are divided over whether people should always finish a course of antibiotics.
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Health
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It is time to reconsider the widespread advice that people should always complete an entire course of antibiotics, experts in the BMJ say.
They argue there is not enough evidence to back the idea that stopping pills early encourages antibiotic resistance.
Instead, they suggest, more studies need to be done to see if stopping once feeling better can help cut antibiotic use.
But GPs urge people not to change their behaviour in the face of one study.
Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, leader of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said an improvement in symptoms did not necessarily mean the infection had been completely eradicated.
"It's important that patients have clear messages, and the mantra to always take the full course of antibiotics is well known - changing this will simply confuse people."
The opinion piece, by a team of researchers from across England, argues that reducing the use of antibiotics is essential to help combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
Prof Martin Llewelyn, from the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, together with colleagues, argues that using antibiotics for longer than necessary can increase the risk of resistance.
He suggests traditional long prescriptions for antibiotics were based on the outdated idea that resistance to an antibiotic could develop when a drug was not taken for a lengthy time and an infection was undertreated.
Instead, he says, there is now growing evidence that short courses of antibiotics - lasting three to five days, for example - work just as well to treat many bugs.
He accepts there are a few exceptions - for example, giving just one type of antibiotic for TB infections - which is known to lead to rapid resistance.
But the team says it is important to move away from blanket prescriptions and, with more research, give antibiotic prescriptions that are tailored to each infection and each person.
The study acknowledges that hospitals are increasingly reviewing the need for antibiotics from day to day and that there is a growing trend towards shorter courses of drugs.
But it questions whether advice such as stopping once feeling better would be beneficial - particularly when patients do not get the opportunity to be reviewed in the hospital every day.
They accept this idea would need more research.
Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, leader of the Royal College of General Practitioners, says while it is important to take new evidence into account, she "cannot advocate widespread behaviour change on the results of just one study".
She says recommended courses of antibiotics are "not random" but tailored to individual conditions and in many cases courses are quite short.
And she says: "We are concerned about the concept of patients stopping taking their medication mid-way through a course once they 'feel better', because improvement in symptoms does not necessarily mean the infection has been completely eradicated.
Meanwhile, Kieran Hand, spokesman for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: "This opinion article from respected NHS infection experts is a welcome opening of the debate in the UK on the relationship between the length of a course of antibiotics, efficacy and resistance.
"As researchers have pointed out, further research is needed before the 'Finish the course' mantra for antibiotics is changed and any alternative message, such as, 'Stop when you feel better,' can be confidently advocated.
"The ideal future scenario would be that the right length of treatment for a specific infection for patients is identified from clinical trials and the exact quantity prescribed and dispensed."
Public Health England says patients should continue to follow their health professional's advice about using antibiotics.
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Back from the Front: Tracking down WW1 grave markers - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The battlefields of WW1 were once marked by thousands of wooden crosses - but what happened to them?
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Norfolk
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Volunteers have located and photographed hundreds of WW1 grave markers brought back from the front, like this one at Garboldisham, Norfolk
Manicured lawns and gleaming white headstones now welcome visitors to the World War One cemeteries of France and Belgium. But a century ago, these soldiers' graves were marked with simple wooden crosses. What happened to them and who are the people tracking them down?
On the wall of St Anne's Church in Sale, Greater Manchester, hangs one such cross. Made from two pieces of wood nailed together, with a sharp, earth-stained point, it has a metal strip reading: "UNKNOWN BRITISH SOLDIER".
It was one of hundreds of thousands of markers indicating the graves of Commonwealth soldiers all along the Western Front. Some are cracked and water-damaged. Many have woodworm. Some even have the original Somme mud varnished on to them.
Others are ornate, hand-carved and painted, made in the field by comrades, often from scrap wood or old packing crates, and bearing personal inscriptions. Aviators' graves were often marked by propellers.
This cross at St Anne's Church, Sale, is one of hundreds being catalogued by the Returned from the Front project
Heritage specialist Nick Stone and a band of dedicated volunteers are tracking down the repatriated grave markers to photograph and catalogue them and create an ever-growing online map and database.
Nick, of Norwich, jokes that when the Returned from the Front project began in July 2016, he thought "it would all be over by Christmas" - just as people reputedly said about the war itself.
Visitors to WW1 cemeteries, like this one at Ypres, will be familiar with the uniform Portland stone headstones
During the war, graves were usually marked with simple wooden crosses
During the war, soldiers were typically buried where they fell or close by. The sheer volume of casualties, and the fact that units were still sometimes under fire, meant this was often done hastily.
Graves were marked for later identification, sometimes by sticks or rifles pushed into the ground, or by wooden crosses. Such was the scale of the killing that crosses were mass-produced and shipped to the front.
Maj John Burgh Talbot Leighton MC, Scots Guards, Royal Flying Corps, is commemorated by a propeller cross at St Michael and All Angels Church at Alberbury, Shropshire
Later, under the authority of the Imperial War Graves Commission - now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) - these bodies were exhumed and reburied in larger cemeteries, marked with the now-familiar uniform Portland stone gravestones.
The now-redundant wooden markers were then offered to the dead men's families, with each responsible for either collecting them or shipping them home. According to CWGC records, at least 10,000 were returned to next of kin.
Some were given to churches or other organisations, but most of the unclaimed markers were destroyed. Often they were burnt and the ashes scattered across the burial grounds.
Nick Stone, the man behind the Returned from the Front project, has been fascinated by WW1 since he was a boy
Trips to WW1 battlefields and cemeteries, including Bernafey Wood on the Somme, helped inspire Nick's project
Of the crosses that survive today, most are in churches but others are in museums, memorial halls, private collections and even schools.
Nick's interest came through a lifelong fascination with World War One. His birthday is on Armistice Day, when his mother would often take out a tin containing her late father's medals, a few lace postcards and his "Dead Man's Penny" commemorative plaque.
"Handling this huge penny with my grandfather's name, Percy James Parr, on it left an indelible mark. I've chased who he was ever since," he says.
Nick's grandfather was 37 when he was killed at Messines Ridge on 7 June 1917.
But there is no marker for him. As Nick writes on his blog, he "did actually vanish, totally, no evidence, no meat or bone, nothing to sew in a blanket and bury in a cemetery".
He is, however, commemorated on the Menin Gate in Ypres, along with the other men in his company who died in the same attack - all of them missing.
Nick's grandfather, Percy James Parr, pictured with his wife Jesse, daughter Grace (Nick's mother) and son Tom, was killed in 1917, aged 37
Nick's grandfather is commemorated on the Menin Gate at Ypres
Nick's idea for Returned from the Front came through "thinking out loud on Twitter", and he harnessed social media to recruit volunteers to survey, catalogue and photograph the grave markers.
"The volunteers are great. They are from all walks of life. The youngest is four - she went with her dad - and the adults are from 18 up to 80. Everybody's been pretty marvellous, really," he says.
Maj George F Molineux-Montgomerie, killed at the Hohenzollern Redoubt in northern France on 22 October 1915, is commemorated by a cross at Garboldisham, Norfolk
So far, about 70 volunteers have sent in photographs and surveys, with many more providing other helpful information.
Margaret Draycott, a phlebotomist from Liverpool, and colleague Bev Goodwin have catalogued 85 markers, mainly around the north-west of England, but as far away as north Wales, Shropshire and Sussex.
When not visiting the grave marker sites, Margaret is often conducting internet research. "If my family want to find me, they know I'm 'crossing'," she says.
Colleagues Bev Goodwin (left) and Margaret Draycott, pictured on a battlefield tour in Belgium, have catalogued 85 markers between them
Lt Col Philip Vaughan Holberton, who was mentioned in despatches five times, is remembered at St Mary's Church, Bitterley, Shropshire
Another of the more ornate crosses is at the Army Training Centre in Pirbright, Surrey, and commemorates members of the Grenadier Guards
Some churches are not aware of the significance of the markers, or even what they are. "People have engaged with us and are absolutely blown away that what they have are from soldiers' graves," says Margaret.
Among the markers she has photographed is that of Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known as Hedd Wyn, the Welsh poet killed on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele on 31 July 1917.
A cross for Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known as Welsh poet Hedd Wyn, is on display at the Llys Ednowain Heritage Centre at Trawsfynydd, Gwynedd, north Wales
Hedd Wyn, who was 30 when he died, wrote his famous poem Yr Arwr (The Hero) before leaving for the front
One unusual marker is a wooden Star of David, at Broadgreen Cemetery, Liverpool, commemorating an unknown Jewish soldier.
Often it was impossible to identify an individual soldier's remains, and Merseyside has a particular concentration of markers for so-called "unknowns", probably brought back during pilgrimages by churches and other groups.
Although most markers were crosses, Jewish soldiers' graves were sometimes indicated by a Star of David
Capt WHM Kersey, who was killed near Ypres on 17 October 1917, is commemorated by a cross at St John the Baptist Church, Felixstowe, Suffolk
Capt Kersey's cross was originally at The Huts Cemetery, Dikkebus, Belgium
After the war, crosses at The Huts Cemetery were replaced by Portland stone headstones
Ministry of Defence colleagues Samantha Fryer, from Swindon, and Dr Alison Wilken, from Lambourn, Berkshire, have surveyed markers in Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Gloucestershire.
"It's quite nice to know that you are part of a project that's being published that schools and researchers might find useful in the future," says Samantha.
Samantha Fryer is often accompanied by Arthur the terrier on her visits
Gnr Harry Varney is commemorated by a cross featuring an inscription scratched on a piece of tin
St Mary the Virgin Church at Wootton, Oxfordshire, has eight crosses, including one for Gnr Harry Varney, killed in September 1917, aged 30.
It bears an inscription scratched on a piece of metal, possibly from a tobacco or pilchard tin. "To see somebody's writing like that was quite poignant," says Samantha.
"There is an enormous contrast between a lowly gunner's cross with a piece of tin tacked to it and the impressive carved and painted crosses of the officers."
Returned from the Front builds on work by Imperial War Museums (IWM). "It's an absolutely first-class project, worthy of our fullest support," says Ian Hook, who runs IWM's War Memorials Register of more than 68,000 memorials, including 610 battlefield markers.
Only recently, he says, has their significance has been properly appreciated. Many were lost, possibly thrown away by "trendy vicars", who felt that their presence was a tacit endorsement of war, he says.
The organisation that became the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was set up by Sir Fabian Ware
Many crosses would not even have made it back to Britain at all. "They were offered back to families, but many soldiers were just working lads and the families had lost their breadwinner," he explains.
"Given the opportunity to acquire a cross or buy food or shoes for the kids, what were they going to do?"
Others were lost or destroyed as the fighting shifted and the makeshift cemeteries became battlefields once more.
The fact that any markers found their way home is testament to the work of the CWCG, whose founder Sir Fabian Ware was determined to ensure the resting places of the war dead would not be lost.
"It's important to preserve these relics of the war," says the organisation's chief historian Glyn Prysor.
"They're physical objects brought all the way back from the battlefield and they can help us to connect with that in a tangible way."
Nearly 12,000 Commonwealth servicemen are buried at Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Passchendaele, Belgium
"The body may be far away in a cemetery but the marker may be in a local church or somewhere else significant. It's making that link between the local area and a global conflict. It's a very special thing."
For now, the work of Nick and his volunteers continues. They hope it will help the markers survive even longer.
Although the many events that have been held to commemorate the war's centenary will conclude next year, Nick says: "I think it's important we don't stop remembering after 11 November 2018."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-40446229
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Diesel and petrol car ban: Clean air strategy 'not enough' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The clean air strategy should include a scrappage scheme and clean air zones, campaigners say.
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UK
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The government's £3bn clean air strategy does not go "far enough or fast enough", campaigners have said.
Moves including banning the sale of new diesel and petrol cars from 2040 and £255m for councils to tackle air pollution locally have been welcomed.
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said the government was determined to deliver a "green revolution".
But environmental groups criticised the decision not to include a scrappage scheme or immediate clean air zones.
The plan to stop all sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 is part of the government's intention for almost every car and van on UK roads to be zero emission by 2050.
The government report includes the promise of £40m immediately to start local schemes rolling, which could include changing road layouts, retrofitting public transport or schemes to encourage people to leave their cars at home.
The funding pot will come from changes to tax on diesel vehicles and the reprioritising departmental budgets - the exact details will be announced later in the year.
If those measures do not cut emissions enough, charging zones for the most polluting vehicles could be the next step.
While air pollution has been mostly falling in the UK, in many cities, nitrogen oxides - which form part of the discharge from car exhausts - regularly breach safe levels.
Mr Grayling said the new plan showed the government was "determined to deliver a green revolution in transport and reduce pollution in our towns and cities".
But campaigners say these are the measures that need to be implemented now to tackle environmental and health problems, with air pollution linked to about 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK.
Professor Neena Modi, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Hea lth, said air pollution "is a public health emergency" and said it was "frankly inexcusable" that the plans still did not go far enough.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas welcomed the 2040 announcement, but added: "We also need action that tackles this health emergency in the coming months and years.
"We should use this opportunity to revamp our towns and cities with investment in walking and cycling, and by ensuring that public transport is affordable and reliable."
Greenpeace UK's clean air campaigner Areeba Hamid said 2040 was "far too late" and called for the UK to "lead the world in clean transport revolution".
And ClientEarth - the law firm that took the government to court over pollution levels - said the plans were "underwhelming" and "lacking in urgency".
The shadow environment secretary, Labour's Sue Hayman, said the plan saw the government "shunting the problem on to local authorities" and accused it of having a "squeamish attitude" towards clean air zones.
"With nearly 40 million people living in areas with illegal levels of air pollution, action is needed now, not in 23 years' time," she added.
Liberal Democrat and former Energy Secretary Ed Davey criticised the lack of scrappage scheme as a "shameful betrayal" of diesel car drivers, and said it showed "the utter lack of ambition" of the plan.
And London Mayor Sadiq Khan said people in the capital were "suffering right now" because of air pollution and "can't afford to wait".
The AA also said significant investment would be needed to install charging points across the country for electric vehicles and warned the National Grid would come under pressure with a mass switch-on of recharging after the rush hour.
The government said a new bill would allow it to require the installation of charge points at motorway service areas and large fuel retailers.
The timetable for councils to come up with initial plans has been cut from 18 months to eight, with the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) wanting to "inject additional urgency" into the process.
It follows the government being given its own deadline of 31 July after High Court judges said it was failing to meet EU pollution limits.
Local Government Association environment spokesman Martin Tett welcomed the additional funding, but opposed holding off on a scrappage scheme, arguing "this immediate intervention could help increase the uptake of lower emission vehicles".
BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said councils were not happy to be taking the rap for the controversial policy when it was the government that had encouraged the sale of diesel vehicles in the first place.
"Today's government plan is not comprehensive - it doesn't address pollution from construction, farming and gas boilers," he added.
"And clean air campaigners say the government is using the 2040 electric cars announcement to distract from failings in its short-term pollution policy."
The UK announcement comes amid signs of an accelerating shift towards electric cars instead of petrol and diesel ones, at home and abroad:
Ford's chief financial officer Bob Shanks told the BBC that he supported the ban and believed that Europe would be "ground zero" in leading a global trend to electric vehicles.
"We certainly see that trajectory being quite feasible, and is something that we support," he added.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40731164
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Lana Del Rey: 'I got jolted into the real world' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The star explains how 'being bombarded by news' made her latest album more political.
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Entertainment & Arts
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She's just been in the studio with Radio 1's Nick Grimshaw, trying to make him giggle while he goes about some serious radio presenting business; and she's daydreaming about her favourite UK delicacy - a sandwich from Pret.
When she discovers she's in the same building as the BBC newsroom, the star politely asks for a guided tour.
"I never get to do stuff like this," marvels the singer, as she walks wide-eyed past the studios and satellite feeds.
In this context, Del Rey is oddly anonymous. Jane Hill, who is preparing to read the lunchtime news on BBC One, doesn't even look up when the superstar squeezes past her desk.
It's a rare luxury for someone who's followed by paparazzi and the all-seeing cameras of TMZ when she's at home in California.
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She addresses the lack of privacy on her new album, Lust For Life, where a song called 13 Beaches finds Del Rey searching for a spot "past Ventura and lenses plenty" where she can enjoy a romantic moment in seclusion.
When we sit down to chat, she reveals those same concerns stopped her attending the women's marches in Los Angeles, earlier this year.
"I drove my sister and her girlfriends to the marches," she says. "I thought about [joining in] but I felt, like, not really sure how it would go.
"I didn't really want to be a distraction to that group of 10 girls who were going. I wanted them to think about the actual march and not about me standing right next to them."
But the star is making her contribution in other ways. A new song, God Bless America And All The Beautiful Women In It, is an ode to womankind ("may you stand proud and strong"); while Coachella - Woodstock In My Mind, mines the contradictions of dancing at a festival "whilst watching tensions with North Korea mount".
It's a new dimension for Del Rey's lyrics - which have traditionally concerned themselves with "looking for love in all the wrong places".
"I kind of got jolted into the real world again," she says.
"Just being in California, it's such a liberal state, I was bombarded with the news every day. So my studio became like a think tank - during the elections it was a constant conversation with my producer and engineers and assistant engineers.
"And then obviously during Coachella, that news broke about North Korea and pointing missiles at each other. That was a bit of a rude awakening."
Lust For Life sees Lana questioning America's place in the world
Del Rey's work rate is astonishing. Lust For Life is her fifth album in six years - and it bursts at the seams, with 16 tracks all co-written with her longtime producer Rick Nowels.
They record everything at his studio in Santa Monica, just blocks away from the beach, so it "never feels like work," she says.
"Just walking in every day and having a coffee together and taking a walk, and then we start.
"So it doesn't ever feel like I'm pumping them [the songs] out. Although it's definitely a blessing that I've been able to put out so much music."
On Lust For Life, the singer has opened up musically, as well as lyrically. The title track is a pulse-raising duet with The Weeknd, while Summer Bummer almost self-destructs, dissolving into digital noise and blacked-out beats, with Lana's vocals barely holding the song together.
She's also welcomed collaborators into her world for the first time - absorbing them into her aesthetic, rather than capitalising on chart trends.
"It was really fun!" she says of working with A$AP Rocky and The Weeknd. "I wanted those guys to add a little fire, a little energy to the record."
The Lust For Life video finds Lana and The Weeknd sharing a romantic evening on top of the Hollywood sign
More daunting was inviting rock legend Stevie Nicks to duet on Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems.
"I was definitely nervous," says Del Rey of the recording session.
"She got off the plane at 10:30, so she didn't get to the studio until midnight - and she just breezed in, black on black, gold everywhere. She was kind of a vision.
"When she started singing, she told me she wanted to hear me sing something, too. And then I really freaked out!
"I said to her over the mic, 'I just sound so quiet compared to you.' And she was like, 'That's ok, you can be my little echo!'
"I thought that was so cool. I'm not as loud as her. My voice isn't as low as hers. But she loves it for what it is.
"That, as it was happening, was a career-defining moment for me."
The star's hits include Video Games, Born To Die, High By The Beach and Ultraviolence
Other songs on the album had a more troubled gestation. Del Rey says the closing track, Get Free, originally had a different title, and much more personal lyrics.
"That song started out really revealing," she says. "I wanted to summarise my whole experience over the last six years; and then I realised, I don't want to reveal everything."
Once the initial version was "out of my system", she says, the recording was "deleted completely then started from scratch".
The lyrics became more vague and more hopeful; and the re-recorded version ends with Del Rey referencing Neil Young: "I want to move out of the black, into the blue".
"I think it would have been hard for me to do interviews if I'd said a couple of particular things that I was thinking of," she says of the original.
"Kind of the way Ultraviolence did. It was harder to promote that record."
She's referring to the title track of her second album, which depicted Del Rey in a destructive, abusive relationship. Del Rey has previously hinted the song refers to her association with an "underground sect" in New York, which was controlled by a charismatic guru.
In concert, she has recently stopped singing the song's key line, "he hit me and it felt like a kiss".
"I don't feel comfortable with that lyric any more," she says now. "Whatever my concept of affection was at the time, it does not serve me any more. Obviously. Hopefully."
Lana's fanbase is particularly devoted - she leaves most shows carrying armfuls of bouquets
On Lust For Life she seems happier, more outward-looking than before. On stage, she's more confident, too.
Launching the album at a one-off gig in London, she's forced to abandon her performance of the opening track, Love.
Earlier in her career, she might have frozen. Now, she just sings it a capella, with the crowd stepping in as her own personal choir.
"I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I think my keyboard player was playing the wrong chords," she explains. "I was leaning in to him and saying, 'That's not it, that's not it' and he was like, 'That is it, trust me'.
"I listened for 10 seconds and I was like, 'Damn, I definitely can't get it'. I couldn't get it in rehearsal, either. So I just told him to stop. I feel bad - I was kind of abrasive.
"But that song is at the heart of the record and I thought it'd be weird if I didn't do it. So, luckily the people who were at the show knew the words and they sang along with me."
She listens with glee to a recording of the song - explaining how, because she wears in-ear headphones, she hadn't realised how loud the crowd had been.
"I'm so glad," she says. "Being in the audience, did you feel that, too?"
I tell her it was like being in church. "Oh, stop!" she beams, and bursts into laughter.
That good mood isn't going anywhere soon.
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Manchester terror attack: Saffie Roussos funeral held - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Some of the hundreds of mourners at Manchester Cathedral wore pink, Saffie Roussos's favourite colour.
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Manchester
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. A montage of photos, set to Ariana Grande's One Last Time, was played in the service
The youngest Manchester bombing victim was a "superstar in the making", her father has said at her funeral.
Wiping away tears, Andrew Roussos joined mourners at the city's packed cathedral to remember "stunning, stunning" eight-year-old Saffie.
She was among 22 people killed when Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena on 22 May.
The service was the last of the funerals for the victims.
Hundreds of mourners filed into the cathedral, some wearing pink, which was Saffie's favourite colour.
Andrew Roussos puts a hand around his son Xander as he carries his daughter's coffin
Others carried a single rose, as requested by the family, in tribute to their daughter's middle name, Rose.
Saffie's coffin was also covered in roses.
Saffie, from Lancashire, had been at the venue with her mother Lisa and sister, Ashlee Bromwich, 26, who were both injured in the attack.
During the service, Mr Roussos said he had been "honoured to be her dad" and she was "a superstar in the making".
"To become something in life, you need to have that something," he said.
"That spark. That charisma. The ones that make it are born with it, they get it from the very beginning.
Saffie's mother Lisa Roussos and brother Xander watched as her coffin, covered with roses, was carried out of the hearse
Andrew Roussos described his daughter as "a joker" and "a huge character"
Mr Roussos added the "Manchester community, family and friends have been fantastic".
The cortege left Wythenshawe Hospital, where Mrs Roussos, who has undergone multiple operations since the attack and for a while was in an induced coma, is still receiving treatment.
A letter from her sister Ashlee was read out in which she wrote: "I close my eyes and I see your face with your brown eyes burning.
"I imagine how you run up and jump into my arms. I see you everywhere, with your smile from ear to ear.
"You lived to entertain, and to keep us all smiling. Something about you got everyone's attention. Your silliness and jokes are the highlights of my memories.
"Whatever you wanted, you were going to make it happen. I wish I could do you justice with my words.
"Nothing more, nothing less could I have ever wanted in a baby sister."
Manchester Cathedral, just around the corner from the scene of the bombing, seemed an especially poignant location for a day of tributes to the atrocity's youngest victim.
It also marked the last of 22 funerals for those who died.
Many of those ceremonies have been private, unpublicised affairs, but the family of Saffie Roussos extended an open invitation for anyone to come to pay their respects.
A bleak, rainy afternoon did not dissuade hundreds from attending. The cathedral itself was packed, with dozens of others - including many children - listening to the service via speakers set up outside.
Mourners heard how eight-year-old Saffie had loved dance, performance and stardom. She lived to entertain, and had dreamt of one day being as famous as her idol, Ariana Grande.
Today's service, back in the heart of Manchester, was a reminder that she, and all of the victims, will certainly not be forgotten.
Saffie was a pupil at Tarleton Primary School in Lancashire
A montage of photos, set to the music of Grande's hit One Last Time, was also shown before being released by her family and friends.
The YouTube video clip shows a series of photographs and the family said they hoped it would be liked and shared to fulfil her dream of becoming famous.
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Rev Govender said 22 decorative bees would be placed in the cathedral's furniture as a memorial to the victims of the bombing.
He asked Mrs Roussos to hold one of the model bees as he dedicated it to Saffie.
He said the service was a "poignant moment", not just for Saffie's family but also for the people of Manchester.
Saffie's coffin was carried outside to the sound of school friends singing Over The Rainbow as spontaneous applause rang out from members of the public as the funeral cars left the cathedral for a private cremation.
Flowers and tributes flooded in for Saffie after the Manchester attack
A short service was also held at Holy Trinity Church in Tarleton, where Saffie went to school, for those who could not travel to Manchester.
The Rev David Craven said: "There was a real desire among some in the community to have a gathering to mark Saffie's life.
"We wanted to open the doors of the church, which will be open all day for quiet reflection, and collective grief.
"You can't even begin to imagine what the families are going through. It's times like this when words seem hollow."
Twenty-one funerals had previously been held for the victims of the attack, several of them private.
The first was for 14-year-old Eilidh MacLeod in Barra, Scotland, on 5 June, and the most recent was for Kelly Brewster in Sheffield on 21 July.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-40715766
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Newspaper headlines: 'End of the diesel and petrol car' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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News that sales of new diesel and petrol cars and vans will be banned from 2040 dominates the front pages.
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The Papers
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The Sun calls the planned ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 a "bombshell for motoring".
The "war on diesels", declares the Daily Mail, is "getting dirty".
The Daily Telegraph suggests that any scrappage scheme is likely to be "very, very targeted".
The Times warns that measures such as removing road humps and changing road layout will not go far enough for air quality campaigners who want fees imposed on diesel drivers entering cities.
But the Sun says "the government should be congratulated" on a plan that does not "punish diesel drivers".
The paper raises concerns of what it calls a "looming power crisis", saying that recharging electric cars would increase demand on the electricity grid by 16%.
The Mail suggests a ban on diesel vehicles at peak times has not been ruled out.
While the papers say goodbye to "gas guzzlers", they welcome BMW's decision to build its electric Minis in Britain.
The Sun, Daily Express and Daily Mail all pronounce it as a "Brexit boost".
The Daily Mirror calls it "E-Mini marvel," with Unite trade union boss Len McCluskey attributing the move to the "world-class workforce" at BMW's plant near Oxford.
But the Financial Times raises concerns that the car's batteries are to be made in Germany, saying it "flags up a British weak spot".
The lack of a battery factory here, says the FT, caused Jaguar Land Rover to make its first electric vehicle in Austria.
On its front page, the Mirror shows pictures of Charlie Gard and one of the the killers of Stephen Lawrence, David Norris.
It says it is "beyond belief" that the baby's parents received no legal aid, unlike Norris who is pursuing a case against prison chiefs.
It suggests there is something "deeply wrong" with the means-testing system.
The Mail focuses on Charlie Gard's parents' court case, where it says "tempers flared".
It calls for the parents to be "given some peace".
The i focuses on the US specialist in the case, saying anger is growing since he had admitted a financial interest in the experimental procedure Charlie's parents were pushing for.
The Guardian suggests the case raises the ethics of questioning the expert even though he had not seen the child.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Casualty actor Tom Chambers is "completely mortified" after he faced condemnation for suggesting the wage differential was down to men supporting their families.
The Times says Labour MP Stella Creasy likened his mindset to someone in the 50s.
Chambers apologised, saying that in no way did he advocate the pay gap.
After a difficult week there are some positive headlines for the BBC - both the Sun and the Mirror note that it takes three places in the top 10 most highly rated brands, with John Lewis claiming the top spot.
Brand May gets a bit of a bashing in some of the papers.
The prime minister is pictured in most of them on her holidays, wearing a pink shirt-dress.
The Times notes her "sartorial choices" are "more muted".
The Daily Mail is more direct, suggesting she should not have worn the pale number until her legs were tanned.
But the Daily Star has different concerns.
"May we ask who is in charge?", questioning why she has not named a minister to take her place in her absence.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-40723565
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Employment tribunal fees unlawful, Supreme Court rules - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Trade union Unison argued fees of up to £1,200 a case prevented workers getting access to justice.
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UK
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Fees for those bringing employment tribunal claims have been ruled unlawful, and the government will now have to repay up to £32m to claimants.
The government introduced fees of up to £1,200 in 2013, which it said would cut the number of malicious and weak cases.
Government statistics showed 79% fewer cases were brought over three years - trade union Unison said the fees prevented workers accessing justice.
The government said it would take steps to stop charging and refund payments.
The Supreme Court ruled the government was acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally when it introduced the fees.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said: "The government has been acting unlawfully, and has been proved wrong - not just on simple economics, but on constitutional law and basic fairness too."
He added: "These unfair fees have let law-breaking bosses off the hook these past four years, and left badly treated staff with no choice but to put up or shut up.
"We'll never know how many people missed out because they couldn't afford the expense of fees."
The government had already made a voluntary commitment to reimburse all fees if it was found they acted unlawfully. Fees have raised about £32m since being introduced.
Justice minister Dominic Raab said the government would cease taking fees for employment tribunals "immediately" and begin the process of reimbursing claimants, dating back to 2013.
He said: "We respect the judgement and we are going to take it fully on board and we are going to comply with it."
It would fall to the taxpayer to pick up the bill, he said.
"The tricky, the difficult, the fluid balancing act that we've got is we want to make sure there's proper access to justice, we want to make sure frivolous or spurious claims don't clog up the tribunal and at the same time we've got to make sure we've got the right way to fund it.," he said.
Fees ranged between £390 and £1,200. Discrimination cases cost more for claimants because of the complexity and time hearings took.
The Supreme Court found this was indirectly discriminatory because a higher proportion of women would bring discrimination cases.
It also said that some people would not bring cases to employment tribunals because paying the fees would render any financial reward pointless.
The court's summary added claimants in low or middle income household could not afford the fees "without sacrificing ordinary and reasonable expenditure for substantial periods of time".
TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said it was a "massive win" for workers.
"Too many low-paid workers couldn't afford to uphold their rights at work, even when they've faced harassment or have been sacked unfairly," she said.
The decision was welcomed by employment lawyer Karen Jackson, who said: "I don't know an employment lawyer who didn't think it was wrong to have fees.
"We all felt that morally it was the wrong thing to do as a barrier to justice."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40727400
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Michael Gove: UK won't accept US chlorinated chickens - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The UK would not agree a US trade deal which included chlorine-washed chicken, Michael Gove says.
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UK Politics
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Environment Secretary Michael Gove tells Today a US trade deal will not allow chlorinated chicken
The UK should not accept imports of chlorinated chickens as part of any future trade deal with the US, Michael Gove has said.
The environment secretary told the BBC that the UK would not "compromise" on or "dilute" its animal welfare standards in the interests of trade.
The EU currently bans chlorine-washed chickens on welfare grounds.
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox has questioned this but downplayed the potential for UK-US disagreement.
It will be up to the UK to decide whether to retain the ban once it leaves the EU in March 2019.
Labour said the government's "casual and inconsistent" approach risked undermining British farmers.
On a visit to Washington on Monday, Mr Fox said chlorinated chicken was just one detail in one sector that would only be addressed at the end of discussions about a free trade deal - which are likely to be years away.
He has suggested there are no food safety issues regarding chlorine-washed chickens, a view shared by many UK experts.
In the US, it is legal to wash chicken carcasses in strongly chlorinated water.
Producers argue that it stops the spread of microbial contamination from the animal's digestive tract to the meat, a method approved by US regulators.
But the practice has been banned in the EU since 1997, where only washing with cold air or water is allowed.
The EU argues that chlorine washes could increase the risk of bacterial-based diseases such as salmonella on the grounds that dirty abattoirs with sloppy standards would rely on it as a decontaminant rather than making sure their basic hygiene protocols were up to scratch.
There are also concerns that such "washes" would be used by less scrupulous meat processing plants to increase the shelf-life of meat, making it appear fresher than it really is.
Agriculture is likely to be one of the sticking points in talks over a deal, amid concerns about differing farming and welfare practices, such the use of growth hormones given to cows and cattle.
Asked whether lifting the ban on chlorinated chickens was a price to be paid for sealing a post-Brexit deal with the US, Mr Gove told BBC Radio 4's Today: "No. I have made it perfectly clear we are not going to dilute our high environmental standards or our animal welfare standards in the pursuit of a trade deal.
"We need to ensure that we do not compromise those standards. And we need to be in a position as we leave the European Union to be leaders in environmental and in animal welfare standards."
On whether poultry could scupper a US trade deal, he added: "The Trade Secretary, quite rightly, pointed out that, of course, this issue is important, but we mustn't concentrate just on this one issue when we look at the huge potential that a trade deal can bring."
While membership of the EU meant the UK had to accept some environmental obligations "which do not work in the interests of the environment", he said the UK had been a world leader in environmental standards for decades and that would continue after Brexit.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Fox: It's early days in US trade discussions
Mr Fox, who concluded a four-day trip to the US on Wednesday, has said the UK will not be lowering its food safety or animal welfare standards after Brexit but decisions on US chicken imports and other consumer protection issues should be based on scientific advice.
"There is no health issue with that - the European Union has said that it is perfectly safe," he said. "The issue lies around some of the secondary issues of animal welfare and it's perfectly reasonable for people to raise that, but it will come much further down the road."
A Lords report on Wednesday warned that UK farmers' livelihoods could be threatened by an influx of cheaper food imports from the US. It said there was evidence that UK consumers would be willing to pay more for food reared to higher standards but it remained to be seen if this would happen in practice.
For Labour, shadow environment secretary Sue Hayman said the cabinet was in disarray over the issue.
"Theresa May must set the record straight by publicly supporting British poultry farmers and committing to protect the British public from substandard food produce in a race-to-the-bottom Brexit," she said.
But Conservative MP John Redwood said British farmers were already losing out to cheaper competition from the European continent, where welfare standards - both in terms of the rearing and transport of animals - were not as high as in the UK.
"When we leave the EU we will be free to set our own standards, which will be higher than EU minimum requirements," he wrote on his blog. "This makes animal welfare an odd argument for people to use who want us to stay in the EU system."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40726208
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Facebook flush with advertising money - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The social media company's profits jumped 71%, amid strong advertising spending and user growth.
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Business
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Facebook revenues and profits soared in the most recent quarter, as advertising dollars poured into the social media company and users continued to flock to the site.
More than two billion people - more than a quarter of the world's population - log into the site every month, a powerful draw for advertisers.
The firm said revenues hit $9.3bn (£7.09bn) over the April to June period, jumping 45% year-on-year.
"We had a good second quarter and first half of the year," said chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook in 2004.
Facebook has been adding more advertising as well as more consumers, as it explores how to monetise its other social networking platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The company said that Instagram was making an increasing contribution to growth, but that the news feed at the heart of Facebook remained the biggest driver.
It was still early days for advertising on Facebook's messenger service, said Mr Zuckerberg, but he told an investor call he was "confident we're going to get this right in the long term".
Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said brands were experimenting with different advertising formats within Facebook's platforms, for example Tropicana had found that six-second ads gave better results than longer versions, she said.
Facebook faces competition from Snapchat, a platform particularly popular amongst young social media users, which pioneered the idea of "stories", a series of messages aimed at a wider audience that lasts for 24 hours.
Instagram and WhatsApp are now offering similar features.
Facebook shares, which have risen steadily this year, bounced 3.6% in after-hours trade.
The company said mobile ads represented 87% of its advertising revenue of $9.16bn, up from 84% a year ago.
The firm now employs more than 20,600 people, up 43% year-on-year.
The firm said the number of monthly active users at the end of June - 2.01 billion - was 17% higher than a year ago and two thirds of those logged onto the site daily.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40732036
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Charlie Gard: Judge to decide where baby's life will end - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Baby's parents want him allowed home, but hospital bosses say a hospice would be a better place.
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London
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Connie Yates and Chris Gard accept Charlie should be moved to palliative care
A High Court judge is set to decide later where Charlie Gard's life will end after another dispute between his parents and hospital bosses.
Chris Gard and Connie Yates want permission to take the 11-month-old home for his final days.
But Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said it was not practical to provide the level of life-support treatment to Charlie at the couple's London home.
It says a hospice would be a more appropriate place for him.
The court hearing is due to resume at 14:00 BST.
Doctors at the London hospital have said moving Charlie to a hospice is the best option as a ventilator would not fit through the couple's front door in Bedfont, west London.
Mr Justice Francis, who analysed the dispute at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court on Tuesday, said that, having heard the evidence, the chances of Charlie's parents' wishes being granted were small.
Charlie has a rare genetic condition and would not live to see his first birthday, his father said
Charlie has the rare genetic disorder, encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He has brain damage and cannot move his arms or legs.
Speaking on Tuesday, Ms Yates said: "We promised Charlie every day we would take him home. It seems really upsetting after everything we've been through to deny us this."
Grant Armstrong, representing the parents, accused hospital bosses of "putting up obstacles".
"The parents wish for a few days of tranquillity outside of a hospital setting," he said.
"The parents had hoped that Great Ormond Street would work with them."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Chris Gard: "We are so sorry we could not save you"
But lawyers for the hospital said staff had "moved heaven and earth" for Charlie.
Katie Gollop QC said the couple's needs had to be balanced against Charlie's best interests.
She said GOSH staff had found an "excellent hospice" that would give Charlie and his parents the space, privacy and protection they needed.
Charlie has been in intensive care at Great Ormond Street Hospital since October
The latest hearing comes after Charlie's parents abandoned attempts to persuade the judge to let their son travel to the US for experimental treatment.
They had asked Mr Justice Francis to rule their son should be allowed to undergo a trial of nucleoside therapy in New York developed by Professor Michio Hirano, a move opposed by hospital medics who argued the treatment would be "futile".
But in its statement to the High Court, the hospital said it was also "increasingly surprised and disappointed" that Dr Hirano, "had not read Charlie's contemporaneous medical records or viewed Charlie's brain imaging or read all of the second opinions about Charlie's condition".
GOSH said Professor Hirano had not taken the opportunity to see Charlie until last week, despite being offered the chance to do so by the hospital in January.
Even though the professor gave written evidence at all the court cases, the hospital said it only emerged last week that he had not read the judge's ruling following the first High Court hearing in April.
The hospital added it was concerned to hear the professor state in the witness box at the High Court hearing on 13 July that he had a financial interest in some of the treatment he proposed prescribing for Charlie.
But Dr Hirano said: "I became involved in Charlie's case when I was contacted by his parents, and I subsequently agreed to speak with his doctors to discuss whether an experimental therapy being developed in my lab could provide meaningful clinical improvement in Charlie's condition.
"As I disclosed in court on 13 July, I have relinquished and have no financial interest in the treatment being developed for Charlie's condition.
"Unfortunately, a MRI scan of Charlie's muscle tissue conducted in the past week has revealed that it is very unlikely that he would benefit from this treatment."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40724241
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Win Our Wedding competition leaves brides in lurch - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Five Irish couples who 'won dream weddings' are distraught as the 20,000-euro prize money is withdrawn.
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Europe
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Laura Hussey and her fiancé, Gary Smyth, were due to get married in March after winning a 20,000 euro (£18,000) package
Five Irish couples who won what they thought were dream weddings have been left heartbroken after the 20,000 euro (£18,000) prize money was withdrawn.
Each couple topped a poll after their friends and family bought the most votes from the Win Our Wedding competition online and via text.
Votes were encouraged by the promise that 5% of the money would be given to the Make A Wish Charity.
But now the winners have been informed their weddings will not be funded.
Elaine Whitney, the face of the company behind Win Our Wedding, wrote in an email that the competition had to close due to "cash-flow" struggles and "bad publicity".
Elaine Whitney delivered the bad news to 'winning' couples in an email on Friday
She said she "sincerely apologised" for letting the couples down and hinted that some of the suppliers may agree to go ahead without payment. The competition's Facebook page has since been taken down.
Ms Whitney has been contacted by the BBC and made no comment, but told the Irish Examiner: "There are two things I'm guilty of, one is not closing the company in 2016 and the other is letting couples down.
Ms Whitney has started a new company based on a new model and has said she will be able to cover the cost of two weddings in 2018 once the new model is up and running, The Examiner reported.
A spokesperson for Make A Wish Ireland, who grant wishes to children with life-threatening conditions, said Win Our Wedding had not honoured its donation agreement, and the partnership had been terminated in December 2015.
"If the Make-A-Wish Ireland logo appeared on any Win Our Wedding literature since 31 December 2015, it was without the approval of Make-A-Wish Ireland," said the charity.
The Consumers' Association of Ireland has raised concerns the platform upon which the scheme resembles a pyramid scheme.
"This brings concerns as to the legal advice sought and received upon establishment of the company," said the association's Dermott Jewell.
"It is clear from the messages that the situation has deteriorated over the last six months," he told BBC News NI.
"This raises questions regarding the consideration of continuing while knowing of a financial problem which raises the consideration of reckless trading."
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission Ireland has advised anyone with concerns about the competition to contact their consumer helpline.
Laura Hussey and her fiancé, Gary Smyth, were due to get married in March after winning a 20,000 euros package.
Miss Hussey, from Longford, County Longford, said a friend tagged her in a post about the competition last September.
Miss Hussey estimates about 2,000 euro (£1,780) was spent on the competition by friends and family
"We have been together 21 years and have three beautiful children, but one thing and another means we've never had the money for a wedding," she said.
"We are both from the same very close-knit community, so everyone got behind us straight away.
"Everyone from the Girl Guides to the local driving school supported us."
Miss Hussey has already chosen her wedding dress
Miss Hussey estimates that about 2,000 euros was spent on the competition by their friends and family.
Each couple topped a competition poll after friends and family bought thousands of euros worth of votes
The couple even threw some of their own wages into votes in the closing days of the competition.
Miss Hussey replied to Friday's email saying: "How am I going to explain this to my kids and family?
Competition winners Carol Fleming and her fiancé Dermot Molloy, from Drangan, County Tipperary, discovered the funding would not be forthcoming less than four weeks before their wedding in August.
Carol Fleming, her fiancé Dermot Molloy and their son Danny
Winning the competition was supposed to have made the family's life easier, but it had instead become a "nightmare", said Miss Fleming.
Miss Fleming said the competition had become a nightmare
She said the couple had entered the competition in March - three months after the agreement between Make A Wish and Win Our Wedding was terminated - but were not made aware no money would be going to the charity.
Most of the suppliers booked for the wedding have agreed to do the work for free and the wedding will still go ahead in August.
Cynthia Geelan and her fiancé Michael Cruise were also winners and were due to get married in December
Cynthia Geelan and her fiancé Michael Cruise, from Newtownforbes, County Longford, are due to get married on 9 December, and remain hopeful their wedding will go ahead as planned.
Peggy O'Callaghan, from New South Wales in Australia and her fiancé Keith Smith, from County Cavan, are now doubtful their wedding will go ahead
Peggy O'Callaghan and Keith Smith, who both live in Australia, were hoping to move home to Ireland after winning the competition, as they did not think they would be able to afford the expense of both flights and a wedding.
They are now doubtful their wedding will go ahead.
Kathy Smith and Luke Kelly, from Cavan won the competition in 2015 and were due to get married in November this year.
Kathy Smith and Luke Kelly have decided to downsize their wedding
Miss Smith said: "We were constantly running into issues with them for payments, saying they had other weddings in front of ours that had to be priority and that we couldn't book in anything else for another while.
"Now that we have heard that the competition won't be paying out any more money, we have had to downsize our wedding.
"In total, we have received around 4,500 euros from them and are still owed around 15,000, which has left us in a difficult position to pay for our wedding this November."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-40706043
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Ulster's Jackson and Olding face rape prosecution - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Both Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding deny all allegations against them.
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Northern Ireland
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Both fly-half Paddy Jackson and centre Stuart Olding deny the allegations
Two Ulster rugby stars are among four men to be prosecuted for offences relating to allegations of rape, the BBC understands.
Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were arrested in June 2016 with two other men, and questioned about allegations of a sexual assault in south Belfast.
The PPS confirmed a decision has been taken to prosecute four men in relation to allegations of rape.
Both Mr Jackson, 25, and Mr Olding, 24, deny the allegations.
The Public Prosecution Service said: "Following a careful review of all of the available evidence, in accordance with our Code for Prosecutors, it has been decided that there is sufficient evidence to prosecute four individuals."
Solicitors representing Mr Jackson and Mr Olding confirmed their clients are to be prosecuted for alleged rape.
Another man is to be charged with a sexual offence and a fourth man is to be charged with intent to pervert the course of justice.
Solicitor Joe Rice, representing Stuart Olding said: "I would like to point out that my client has fully co-operated with the investigation and is not on any bail conditions and is of previous good character.
"He should be allowed to uphold his right to the presumption of innocence and rejects any allegation of wrong-doing and is confident his name will be cleared through the courts."
In a similar statement, Paddy Jackson's solicitor Kevin Winters said: "He rejects the allegations completely and we're very disappointed at the PPS decision to prosecute on these particular facts."
"We say there is no basis for the decision to prosecute and we are confident that our client will be cleared of any charge."
The PPS statement added: "As the criminal proceedings against these individuals have commenced and each has a right to a fair trial, it is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice proceedings."
All four men are due to appear in court next month.
The Irish Rugby Football Union and Ulster Rugby said the players have agreed that they be relieved of their duties and obligations until the conclusion of the legal process, to allow them time to address the matter fully.
Mr Jackson and Mr Olding have been involved in legal proceedings against the BBC in relation to the reporting of their arrests.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-40719803
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Will Syria's war criminals be let off the hook? - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Why the collection of evidence about the conflict may not result in prosecutions.
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Middle East
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For six years, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria has been painstakingly gathering information about possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict.
The investigators have produced 13 reports, the evidence in each is harrowing. Villages destroyed, crops burnt, wells poisoned, torture, rape, starvation sieges, mass bombing of civilians, and what only a decade ago might have been unthinkable - chemical weapons.
There is no doubt that war crimes have been committed by all sides, the commission says. In each report there is a demand for "accountability" - that no-one should be allowed to commit such horrific acts and get away with it.
"This would be incredible, a scandal," says commission member Carla Del Ponte, who describes the violations in Syria as by far the worst she has ever come across. "But nothing happens, only words, words, and more words."
Ms Del Ponte, as a former prosecutor at the tribunal for Yugoslavia, and the woman who put Slobodan Milosevic in the dock, knows how to bring war criminals to book.
Carla Del Ponte says the violations of international law in the Syrian conflict are the worst she has encountered
While the Syria commission has no power to prosecute, what it does have is a vast amount of evidence, and a confidential list of names, thought to include figures at the very top of the Syrian government and military.
To bring those individuals (including, Ms Del Ponte thinks, President Assad) to court, the UN Security Council would have to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court. And throughout the Syria conflict, the Security Council has been divided, with Russia and China in particular resisting what they regard as unnecessary interference in Syria's problems.
Now, though, the United Nations, under new Secretary General Antonio Guterres, appears to be flexing its muscles.
A new body has been set up, called, rather dryly, the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism or IIIM, to sift the evidence, build cases, and pass them to any court that could have jurisdiction. Some European countries are already opening cases.
At its head is an experienced French judge, Catherine Marchi-Uhel, who has worked on the tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and the Extraordinary Courts of Cambodia, which prosecuted the Khmer Rouge.
"This gives me hope that something is moving," says Alain Werner, director of Civitas Maxima, a Swiss organisation that works to ensure justice for victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"I didn't even think this body would be set up… this is proof [the UN] is serious."
Mr Werner's own organisation has already built cases against suspected war criminals from Sierra Leone and Liberia, and his work with victims has shown him, he says, that "the eagerness for justice is immense".
One of his colleagues, Antonya Tioulong, knows personally just how important this can be. Her sister and brother-in-law were tortured and murdered in Phnom Penh's notorious S-21 detention centre during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
In 1995, Srebrenica was the scene of the worst massacre of the Bosnian war
In the 1990s, almost two decades after her sister's death, Antonya was able to learn what had happened to her, and she tried to bring a case in the French courts against the Khmer Rouge officers who had run S-21. It was rejected.
"I felt powerless. There was no sign, either, of an international tribunal. I wondered, 'Were the two million victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide so unimportant in the eyes of the world that the criminals did not need to be judged?'"
Antonya had to wait until 2008, when an international tribunal was finally set up. The men who murdered her sister were at last convicted.
She was comforted not just by the verdict, but by the fact that the tribunal was public.
"Thousands of people came from all over the world to attend the hearings in person, showing their desire to understand what happened."
But many thousands of victims still wait. In the Swiss capital, Berne, the Red Cross Centre for Victims of Torture and War had more than 4,000 consultations in 2016 alone.
"Almost the most important thing is that they have the space and time to talk," says psychologist Carola Smolenski. "We have patients from former Yugoslavia who still suffer chronically from their experiences."
For many of these patients, however, there may never be a public tribunal where perpetrators are convicted, and the suffering of their victims formally recognised in a court of law.
Instead, the Red Cross Centre has included a form of "validation" process as part of the therapy.
Many Syrians, millions of whom are in refugee camps, still await news of loved ones
"We will prepare [together with the patient] a detailed chronological report," says Carola Smolenski. "We recognise the experience together, and we sign it as witnesses."
"It is important that they can say, 'That is my story, and it is being taken seriously.'"
For the millions of Syrians waiting in refugee camps, or trapped in besieged cities, peace cannot come soon enough. But millions of Syrians, too, are waiting to know the fate of loved ones who disappeared into Syria's prisons, or vanished in the heat of battle.
In Geneva, the UN peace process is inching along. In the talks about Syria in the Kazakh capital, Astana, the Russians, Turks, and Iranians are working to negotiate "de-escalation zones" to reduce the violence.
But in neither the Geneva process nor Astana is there much talk of accountability for the undoubtedly massive number of war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is unclear whether the newly formed IIIM has a role in the peace process at all.
Could this be because leaders, on all sides of Syria's conflict, might not be motivated to reach a peace deal if they thought a war crimes trial would be their reward?
"You might have put your finger on it," says one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The idea that achieving peace, or at least an absence of war, should take priority over justice is often advanced during tricky diplomatic negotiations.
Some also suggest that war crimes tribunals can sow the seeds of future discord, particularly if victims are from one ethnic group and perpetrators from another.
The Nuremburg war trials resulted in many convictions but little remorse, says UN human rights commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu famously did not want a tribunal for South Africa, pushing instead for a truth and reconciliation process, in which the accused would acknowledge their crimes but also be forgiven by their victims.
The UN's human rights commissioner, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, agrees that creating sustainable peace is a complex process, but insists that the authors of Syria's suffering must be formally prosecuted.
"In Syria, there will never be peace if you don't put the victims at the centre of your effort," he says.
"You can have the most finely crafted agreement, but if victims don't feel justice, then it is worthless, a pointless exercise. There has to be an accounting, the central authors must be brought to book."
Nevertheless, he sees prosecutions as only part of the process.
"At a fundamental level, we will never have permanent peace if we don't deal with unresolved issues."
This means, he says, all sides in a conflict recognising their conduct, and showing "contrition".
And there, Mr Hussein says, society must play its role.
During the German trials after World War Two, he points out, there were 7,000 convictions, but few of those convicted showed any remorse.
The push for contrition and remorse came later, through work by German historians, school teachers, and post-War politicians.
Alain Werner agrees that, in view of the scale of the atrocities in Syria, "it is very difficult to think there will be no justice".
But, he adds, because the number of cases is "staggering", justice is unlikely to be swift. "Syria could take 40 years… even 100 years to investigate."
• None How virtual reality could help prosecute Nazi war criminals
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40685359
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Celine Dookhran killing: Tributes paid to 'beautiful girl' - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Celine Dookhran, of Indian Muslim heritage, was allegedly killed over a relationship with an Arab Muslim.
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London
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A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Celine Dookhran's death was a neck wound
Tributes have been paid to a 20-year-old woman who was allegedly kidnapped and raped before being killed.
Celine Dookhran's body was found at an address in Coombe Lane West, in Kingston Upon Thames, on Wednesday.
Prosecutors allege Mujahid Arshid, 33, murdered the teenager - who was of Indian Muslim heritage - for being in a relationship with an Arab Muslim.
One user on Facebook said: "RIP Celine. Such a beautiful, intelligent soul."
Ms Dookhran, who was born in Wandsworth and grew up in south London, had a passion for make-up and offered cosmetic advice to her followers on social media.
Her social media messages included posts about religious holidays and fasting during Ramadan.
The last tweet, posted eight days before her death, said "Alhamdulillah [praise God] for everything that's all I can say".
Following the news of her death, one of her Twitter followers said: "Innalillahe wainna ilaye rajeeon ["We belong to Allah and to Him we shall return."]
"RIP Celine, You did not deserve what has happened, May Allah grant you a place in Paradise. Inshallah."
While another user posted: "RIP Celine, you were very beautiful and you will never be forgotten."
Ms Dookhran had a passion for make-up and offered cosmetic advice to her Twitter followers
Mr Arshid is also accused of the kidnap, rape and attempted murder of a woman in her 20s.
The second woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had earlier been treated for stab or slash wounds at a south London hospital.
Vincent Tappu, 28, from Acton, west London, is also charged with kidnapping both women.
A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Ms Dookhran's death was a neck wound.
Police found the body of the 20-year-old at a property in Kingston Upon Thames
The men have been remanded in custody.
Mr Arshid, of no fixed address, is scheduled to appear at the Old Bailey on 26 July.
Both defendants will appear at the same court on 21 August.
Update 26 July 2017: The age of Celine Dookhran has been changed following new information from the Metropolitan Police.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40716957
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Switzerland chainsaw attack: Suspect arrested in Thalwil - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Police arrest a man suspected of a chainsaw rampage that left five injured, after a two-day manhunt.
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Europe
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A new image of suspect Franz Wrousis was issued by police on Tuesday
A man who sparked one of the biggest manhunts in Swiss history after allegedly attacking people with a chainsaw has been arrested, police say.
Franz Wrousis, 50, was arrested in Thalwil, a town about 60km (37 miles) from Schaffhausen, the border town where the incident took place.
Mr Wrousis, who is said to have lived in the nearby woods, allegedly attacked two people in an insurance office.
More than 100 Swiss and German officers were involved in the search.
On Tuesday afternoon, after more than 24 hours on the run, Swiss police admitted they had no idea where Mr Wrousis had gone, and could have potentially crossed into Germany,
A helicopter and dogs were used to scour the area for any trace of the alleged suspect, who has two previous convictions for weapons offences.
Police eventually found him in Thalwil, just south of Zurich. No further details were available surrounding the arrest, but local media reported the police were due to hold a press conference early on Wednesday.
Monday's attack unfolded shortly after 10:30 (08:30 GMT), when two workers were attacked and wounded by a chainsaw at the CSS insurance office. One was badly hurt and needed surgery in hospital.
Two other people were treated for shock, while a third was slightly hurt during the ensuing police operation.
Police said Mr Wrousis had been a customer of the firm.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40723179
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Earl Spencer 'lied to' over princes following Diana's coffin - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Young princes should not have had to walk behind their mother's coffin, princess's brother says.
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UK
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Earl Spencer tells Today he was "lied to" over princes' wish to follow Diana's coffin
Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer says he was lied to about Prince William and Prince Harry wanting to walk behind their mother's coffin.
He said it was a "bizarre and cruel thing" for the princes to do and the funeral procession was "the most horrifying half an hour of my life".
He told Radio 4's Today: "I was lied to and told that they wanted to do it, which of course they didn't."
He spoke as the 20th anniversary of her death approaches on 31 August.
"It was the worst part of the day by a considerable margin, walking behind my sister's body with two boys who were obviously massively grieving their mother.
"It was a sort of bizarre circumstance where we were told you just have to look straight ahead.
"But the feeling, the sort of absolute crashing tidal wave of grief coming at you as you went down this sort of tunnel of deep emotion, it was really harrowing actually and I still have nightmares about it now."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Princess Diana's brother tells Radio 4's Today he still has nightmares about walking behind her coffin
The earl also said there had been four attempted break-ins at the family home where Princess Diana was buried after she was killed in a Paris car crash.
He said he had been a "passionate advocate" for William and Harry not to have to walk behind their mother's body but was told the plan had been decided.
"I was liaising with some courtier at Buckingham Palace and he mentioned it and I said of course not, of course they are not going to do that, and he said it had been decided.
"I said she [Diana] just would not want them to do this and there was lots of sort of embarrassed coughing and various other conversations.
"Then eventually I was lied to and told that they wanted to do it, which of course they didn't, but I didn't realise that."
Prince Harry, who was 12 when his mother died, has previously spoken about walking in the funeral procession, saying no child "should be asked to do that".
Describing the procession, the earl said he could hear people sobbing, wailing and shouting messages of love to Diana and the princes which was a "very tricky time".
"But it was impossible not to connect with the emotion coming from the crowd. It was so powerful. Pulsing through us, I think.
"And it was so bizarre, there was a sort of crunching of our procession, the horses and the carriage and our footsteps, and then the incredible crashing emotion coming in from every side. It was really horrifying."
The earl revealed he wrote the eulogy to his sister in his study, a place loved by Princess Diana, and the speech was about speaking for "my sister who was no longer there".
His promise at the funeral in 1997 that William and Harry would be protected by "blood family" was seen as an attack on the Royal Family.
The earl says his eulogy was trying to "celebrate" Diana
The earl said he believes Princess Diana would have been proud of his speech, which he re-read to her body a couple of days before she was buried.
"I know people will think that I am some sort of fruitcake, but I do remember hearing almost some sort of approval then and then I realised then I probably had got some of the thoughts in order."
Reflecting on the eulogy, he said: "I don't feel I said many pointed things. I believe that every word I said was true and it was important for me to be honest.
"I wasn't looking to make any jabs at anyone actually, I was trying to celebrate Diana and if by doing that it showed up particularly the press I think in a bad way, well, they had that coming."
The earl's eulogy also touched on Princess Diana's eating disorders and criticised the paparazzi.
"In her final years Diana was really brought low by elements of the paparazzi and the tabloids," he said.
"I remember she told me about one man that promised to hound her until the day she died, then would urinate on her grave.
"So, she was dealing with a very dark side of the media and, even at her funeral, I think it was appropriate to touch on that."
Princess Diana was one of the most-photographed women in the world
The earl said he has re-read his speech for the first time in 20 years and believes it was "very balanced".
When asked whether the Queen, who is his godmother, said anything to him about the eulogy, he said a friend had told him she said he had a right to say whatever he felt.
"I am not some rabid republican, but the speech was about Diana, it wasn't really about anyone else," he said.
Princess Diana is buried in the grounds of her childhood home
Princess Diana was buried in the grounds of Althorp estate, her childhood home in Northamptonshire, after the earl changed plans for her to be laid to rest in the family tombs at a local church.
He said it seemed "natural" to bury her at their family home as he "wanted to keep her safe".
The earl added: "There was such a whipped up feeling of emotion everywhere that I was very worried about where we could safely bury her."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40717424
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Charlie Gard parents hold private talks about his end of life care - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Both sides are discussing arrangements for terminally-ill baby Charlie Gard's end of life care.
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London
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A specialist doctor has volunteered to give Charlie end of life care in a hospice
The parents of terminally-ill Charlie Gard have agreed he should spend his final days in a hospice.
Connie Yates and Chris Gard originally asked to be allowed to take their son home to die, after ending their legal case on Monday to seek therapy abroad.
For practical reasons, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said a hospice was the most appropriate place for him.
His parents and the hospital have until 12:00 BST on Thursday to agree his end of life care and how long he has left.
Connie Yates was in court to hear the decision about where her son will spend his final days
The court heard there was a dispute between hospital bosses and Charlie's parents about care plans for the 11-month old baby.
Ms Yates and Mr Gard have now accepted their son has to be moved to a hospice but wanted to spend a week there with him before he died.
Some nurses from GOSH and a doctor have volunteered to care for the terminally-ill baby during that time, the family's lawyer Grant Armstrong said.
The family had been unable to find an intensive care specialist, which the hospital had said was "essential" for Charlie's care, though.
Setting the deadline, Mr Justice Francis said he hoped all parties could reach an agreement by 12:00 BST on Thursday, otherwise Charlie would be moved anyway and his life support treatment ended soon after that.
He said the name of the hospice and when Charlie was admitted would remain private.
As the judge made his decision, Ms Yates shouted "I hope you are happy with yourselves" and left the court crying.
On Monday his parents ended their legal fight to take Charlie to the US for experimental therapy on the advice of the US doctor who had offered the treatment.
Mr Gard said his "beautiful" son was not expected to live to see his first birthday on 4 August.
Charlie has encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. He has brain damage and cannot move his arms or legs.
Charlie has been in intensive care since October
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-40733491
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Vegan advert claiming 'Humane milk is a myth' cleared by ASA - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Complaints from the dairy industry are dismissed as vegan group's advert is given the green light.
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UK
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An advert by a vegan campaign group claiming "Humane milk is a myth" has been cleared by regulators, despite complaints from the dairy industry.
Milk producers said it described the separation of mothers from their calves in an inaccurate and misleading way.
The ad featured a photo of a cow behind a piece of barbed wire and the headline "Humane milk is a myth. Don't buy it."
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said it was "unlikely to materially mislead readers".
The national newspaper advert for campaign group Go Vegan World goes on to state: "I went vegan the day I visited a dairy. The mothers, still bloody from birth, searched and called frantically for their babies.
"Their daughters, fresh from their mothers' wombs but separated from them, trembled and cried piteously, drinking milk from rubber teats on the wall instead of their mothers' nurturing bodies. All because humans take their milk."
The ASA said seven complainants, some of whom had experience working in the dairy industry, suggested the claims were misleading and questioned whether they could be substantiated.
Go Vegan World said the advert did not state or imply that calves were separated from their mothers prior to the 12 to 24 hours recommended by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
But they said they believed the exact timing was irrelevant, and most people would consider separation at 25 hours equally as unjust as separation at 24 hours.
The ASA said the language in the advert was "emotional and hard-hitting"
Clearing the advert, the ASA said it understood the complainants were concerned the advert implied a significant number of dairy farms did not comply with animal welfare standards in place in the UK, and milk production was therefore "inhumane" in that sense.
But it concluded that while "the language used to express the claims was emotional and hard-hitting", it was a fact that calves were generally separated from their mothers very soon after birth under Defra regulations and so the advert was unlikely to materially mislead.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40729522
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EU migrant crisis: Austria can deport asylum seekers, court says - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The ruling could affect several hundred people who entered Europe during the migrant crisis.
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Europe
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In 2015, hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees crossed from Hungary into Austria
The EU's top court has ruled that a law requiring refugees to seek asylum in the first country they reach applies even in exceptional circumstances.
The case, brought by Austria and Slovenia, could affect the future of several hundred people who arrived during the migrant crisis of 2015-16.
The ruling concerns two Afghan families and a Syrian who applied for asylum after leaving Croatia.
The court says it is Croatia's responsibility to decide their cases.
The crisis unfolded during the summer of 2015, as one million migrants and refugees travelled through the Western Balkans.
Under the so-called Dublin regulation, refugees typically have to seek asylum in the first EU state they reach. But Germany suspended the Dublin regulation for Syrian refugees, halting deportations to the countries they arrived in.
From August 2015, hundreds - and sometimes thousands - arrived in Austria every day, initially via Hungary and later through Slovenia.
Many wanted to travel on to Germany, but around 90,000 applied for asylum in Austria, equivalent to about 1% of its population.
Among them were two Afghan sisters, Khadija and Zainab Jafari, and their children who arrived at the Austrian border in February 2016.
According to Stephan Klammer, a lawyer from the Diakonie charity, "they came through the organised transports from the Austrian and other governments".
In 2015, the equivalent of 1% of Austria's population applied for asylum there
"They came from Macedonia in a few days directly to Austria. At the Austrian border the Jafari sisters were allowed in because they said they wanted to go to Austria and ask for asylum," he said.
But unlike many other Afghans, they were not granted asylum.
The Austrian authorities eventually decided that they should be deported back to Croatia, their point of entry to the EU, under the Dublin regulation.
Mr Klammer said: "In some cases, the authorities said 'We are not responsible because of the Dublin procedure, Croatia is responsible'. So the Jafaris got this decision."
The Jafari sisters' case was taken to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), along with a similar incident in Slovenia involving a Syrian national.
On Wednesday the ECJ ruled that their crossing of the Croatian border had to be considered irregular under the Dublin rule. Just because one EU country allows a non-EU citizen to enter its territory on humanitarian grounds, that authorisation is not valid in other EU countries.
Austrian lawyer Clemens Lahner said that hundreds of asylum seekers would be affected by the ECJ's decision. "For those already in Croatia - 700 or so - for them the story is over. Austria won't take them back."
But the fate of others is unclear.
Farzad Mohammadi from Afghanistan came to Austria in February 2016 when he was 17 years old. He was deported back to Croatia last November.
"It was very difficult. I had tried so hard. I was in a choir, I played football, I was doing a German course, I did everything I could, but they said that is the law - you have to go," he told the BBC.
However, he was allowed to return to Austria pending the court decision.
Mr Mohammadi in Austria is unclear as a result of the ruling
"Croatia was very bad, worse than Austria. We only had a thin blanket, there were problems with the heating. The toilets were dirty. Very very difficult."
In its ruling the ECJ stressed that EU countries could show a "spirit of solidarity" under a sovereignty clause that allows member states to examine asylum applications even if they do not have to.
Lawyer Clemens Lahner told the BBC that for "those whose asylum claims have been frozen, technically they can be sent back but the court reminds states they can show solidarity or leniency".
In response to the big migrant influx, the EU agreed to relocate 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece, the two countries that have seen the biggest number of arrivals.
However, only 24,600 people have been relocated so far, according to an EU report published on Wednesday.
Although the pace of relocations has improved, two countries have refused to take any refugees, Poland and Hungary. The Czech Republic has not taken anyone since 2016 and Austria has only recently agreed to accept refugees.
Hungary along with Slovakia and Poland called for the relocation policy to be scrapped, but their complaint received a setback from an ECJ legal adviser on Wednesday.
The advocate general recommended that the objection be thrown out, partly because the policy helped "relieve the considerable pressure on the asylum systems of Italy and Greece following the migration crisis in the summer of 2015".
A note on terminology: The BBC uses the term migrant to refer to all people on the move who have yet to complete the legal process of claiming asylum. This group includes people fleeing war-torn countries such as Syria, who are likely to be granted refugee status, as well as people who are seeking jobs and better lives, who governments are likely to rule are economic migrants.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40714946
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New diesel and petrol vehicles to be banned from 2040 in UK - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Ministers have also unveiled a £255m fund to help councils introduce steps to deal with pollution
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UK
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New diesel and petrol cars and vans will be banned in the UK from 2040 in a bid to tackle air pollution, the government has announced.
Ministers have also unveiled a £255m fund to help councils tackle emissions, including the potential for charging zones for the dirtiest vehicles.
But the £3bn clean air strategy does not include a scrappage scheme, calling previous ones "poor value" for money.
Local government leaders welcomed the funding but called for more detail.
Local authorities will be given direct financial support from the government, with £40m of the fund being made immediately.
They can use the funds for a range of measures, such as changing road layouts, implementing new technologies or encouraging residents on to public transport.
If those measures do not cut emissions enough, charging zones could be the next step - but the government says these should only be used for "limited periods".
The timetable for councils to come up with initial plans has been cut from 18 months to eight, with the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) wanting to "inject additional urgency" into the process.
It follows the government being given its own deadline of 31 July after High Court judges said it was failing to meet EU pollution limits.
Local Government Association environment spokesman Martin Tett said the plans to allow councils to switch their focus from monitoring air quality to improving air quality was the right move and welcomed the additional funding.
However, he opposed the view of the government to hold off on a scrappage scheme, arguing "this immediate intervention could help increase the uptake of lower emission vehicles".
Ministers have been wary of being seen to "punish" drivers of diesel cars, who, they argue, bought the vehicles after being encouraged to by the last Labour government because they produced lower carbon emissions.
The industry trade body, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said it was important to avoid outright bans on diesels, which would hurt the sector.
SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said demand for alternatively fuelled vehicles was growing but still at a very low level.
"The industry instead wants a positive approach which gives consumers incentives to purchase these cars. We could undermine the UK's successful automotive sector if we don't allow enough time for the industry to adjust."
The AA said significant investment would be needed to install charging points across the country and warned the National Grid would come under pressure with a mass switch-on of recharging after the rush hour.
The UK announcement comes amid signs of an accelerating shift towards electric cars instead of petrol and diesel ones, at home and abroad:
So how will the air be cleaned up? Plans for a diesel scrappage scheme for old vehicles have been rejected by the Treasury as poor value for money. They may be reconsidered in the autumn.
The government has told councils to solve pollution on their own streets by improving public transport and considering restrictions on dirty diesel vehicles at peak times.
If that doesn't work, councils will be told to charge diesel drivers to come into towns.
The councils aren't happy to take the rap for the controversial policy when it was the government that encouraged the sale of diesel vehicles in the first place.
Today's government plan is not comprehensive - it doesn't address pollution from construction, farming and gas boilers.
And clean air campaigners say the government is using the 2040 electric cars announcement to distract from failings in its short-term pollution policy.
Air pollution is thought to be linked to about 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK, and transport also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.
A government spokesman said poor air quality was "the biggest environmental risk" to public health in the UK.
The measures are "good" in the long term but "not very effective" in the short, industry expert David Bailey said.
A switch-over to electric cars would likely come in the mid-2020s, he predicted, when electric cars would out-compete petrol and diesel ones on factors like cost.
"This sets a very clear direction of travel, but petrol and diesel cars won't exist by 2040," he said.
He said more incentives were needed now, otherwise urban air quality would not improve.
Environmental law firm ClientEarth welcomed the measures, but said it wanted to see more detail.
Chief executive James Thornton said the law found ministers must bring down illegal levels of air pollution as soon as possible.
Green Party MP Caroline Lucas welcomed a ban but said it did not go "nearly far enough or fast enough".
Friends of the Earth said the plan was a "cynical" move which passed the buck of saving lives to local authorities.
Labour said the government was only acting after being taken to court.
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokeswoman Sue Hayman MP said the government had a "squeamish" attitude to clear air zones, and was shunting the problem on to local authorities.
"With nearly 40 million people living in areas with illegal levels of air pollution, action is needed now, not in 23 years' time," she said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40723581
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What makes this Kate Spade bag unusual? - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Why a high-end fashion brand chose a land-locked country in Africa to make some of its handbags.
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Business
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The branding of the On Purpose products is "subtle but appropriate", says Mary Beech
It's easy to miss. The words "on purpose" are printed on a small label inside the tote bag alongside the name of the woman who made it.
It sits inconspicuously next to the other handbags on the shelves at high-end fashion brand Kate Spade.
There is nothing notably different about it.
Yet it was made in a factory that doesn't have a reliable source of running water, where the electricity routinely cuts out, and where, until relatively recently, the workers didn't have the necessary manufacturing skills.
It's in a tiny village called Masoro in landlocked Rwanda.
There are no dependable roads, which means all the products made here have to be airlifted out - a much more expensive option than the usual way of sending them by ship.
And perhaps most unusually, this factory didn't exist at all until global fashion firm Kate Spade decided to open it and fund its creation just over three years ago.
The obvious question is: Why?
On Purpose senior manager Taryn Bird says it was important the project was commercial as well as charitable
"We like to stretch ourselves," laughs Mary Beech, chief marketing officer at the firm.
She says as a brand that makes clothing and handbags for women, and whose employees are mainly female, doing something to help empower women "came very naturally".
The branding of the product is subtle, says Ms Beech, because they don't want it to be a token charity product.
"We want women to buy these bags because they walk into the store and love them. First and foremost it has to be a beautiful product which is completely natural and integrated," she adds.
Rwanda's horrifying 1994 genocide, when 800,000 Rwandans were killed, continues to affect people today, and Kate Spade says this history was an added incentive for choosing the location.
Around 150 people, mainly women, work at Abahizi Dushyigikirane Corporation, known as ADC
Of course, many brands undertake charitable projects.
Fashion firm Asos, for example, sells a "Made In Kenya" range produced by local clothing manufacturer Soko, which it says aims to support local craftsmanship.
Similarly, footwear firms Toms and Roma Boots both give away a pair of shoes to a child in need for each pair they sell.
The difference with Kate Spade's charitable initiative On Purpose, the firm says, is that it's a business venture that had to make commercial as well as emotional sense.
"It couldn't be a crafty aside done for corporate social responsibility that didn't tie back into economic sustainability," says Taryn Bird, senior manager of the On Purpose initiative.
She said this was because the firm wanted to set up something that lasted and enabled the factory to be financially independent, eventually taking orders from other fashion brands and becoming part of the global supply chain.
The only way to make sure this happened, was to set it up themselves, says Ms Bird.
Kate Spade has trained ADC's workers so they have the skills needed to make its products
The factory is not owned by Kate Spade, but is an official supplier. The people who work there - around 150 - are employed by Abahizi Dushyigikirane Corporation, known as ADC.
So is this just exploiting Rwanda's low-wage economy?
Kate Spade says not, pointing out even the lowest paid worker's salary in the country is considerably higher than the median salary for private sector jobs in Rwanda.
It has also set up a life skills programme at the company, offering counselling, information on health and nutrition and English language lessons.
While the firm won't be drawn on how much exactly it ploughed into the factory to get it going, Ms Beech says it was "a minimal investment". Almost four years on she says they are "on track" to get their investment back and for the factory to become profitable. The staff retention rate is an impressive 98%.
But Africa is not such an unusual choice for a firm looking to diversify its supplier base.
Labour costs are already much lower than in China. According to Georgetown University in Washington, which studied the Kate Spade project, staff in factories in coastal China earned around $700 (£537) a month, over six times the average $113 monthly salary at the ADC factory.
Africa is seen by many as the world's next low-cost manufacturing hub
Africa also offers what Ms Bird describes as "a very business friendly climate for export companies".
ADC does not have to pay duties on incoming raw materials and is also able to export the finished bags to the US without tariffs.
In contrast, tariffs on handbags from Asian suppliers range from 4.5% to 17.5%, according to Georgetown University.
So Africa has the potential to become the world's next low-cost manufacturing hub thanks to a cheap workforce and an abundance of raw materials. A lot of production has moved there already.
Ms Beech, however, says that wasn't why Kate Spade chose Rwanda. The bags made there were additional orders reflecting increased demand for its products.
Pietra Rivoli, a professor teaching finance and international business at Georgetown University, and part of the team which researched the project, says it proves it's possible to put a factory anywhere.
"The set up was not terribly complex. It's not something that other companies could not do given the motivation and support from management," she says.
She says the supportive factory set-up made ADC feel very different to any other factory she had visited.
Kate Spade offers "a demonstrative case study" of an alternative approach, says Prof Pietra Rivoli
"I'm not saying other factories are somehow bad. But most supplier relationships tend to be very transactional. The relationship is one of monitoring for labour abuses, whereas the ADC approach is a much more positive philosophy."
Typically, how cheaply and quickly something can be made are the main criteria a company uses for deciding where to locate a factory.
Prof Rivoli says the Kate Spade example offers "a demonstrative case study" of an alternative approach.
"What they have shown is that it can really be a win-win. The factory can pay the company back [for the set-up costs] and the firm can support the worker and their communities.
So far it's one small-scale experiment. But Kate Spade says it is already planning to pilot a second factory in a different developing country in the next couple of years.
"This time we'll make sure it has access to a port," laughs Ms Beech.
More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40682888
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UK military chiefs praise transgender troops - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Comments come after Donald Trump says transgender personnel are to be banned from the US military.
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UK
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Commanders from British armed forces have opposed any ban on transgender people serving in the military.
It comes after Donald Trump said that transgender people would not be allowed in the US military due to "tremendous" medical costs and disruption.
But British officials have supported people serving in the Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
Commander of UK Maritime Forces Rear Admiral Alex Burton tweeted: "I am so glad we are not going this way."
The Obama administration decided last year to allow transgender people to serve openly in the US military.
But in June, Defence Secretary James Mattis agreed to a six-month delay in the recruitment of transgender people.
Now President Trump has posted a series of tweets saying: "After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military.
"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."
In response, Rear Admiral Burton of the Royal Navy tweeted: "As a Royal Navy LGBT champion and senior warfighter I am so glad we are not going this way."
And Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral Jonathan Woodcock tweeted: "So proud of our transgender personnel. They bring diversity to our Royal Navy and I will always support their desire to serve their country.
"I suspect many who doubt the abilities of our diverse service personnel might be more reluctant to serve than they are to comment."
In February, the Army's LGBT champion, Lieutenant General Patrick Sanders said: "Only if individuals are free to be themselves can we release the genie of their potential."
The Houses of Parliament were lit up with the rainbow flag during this year's LGBT Pride celebrations
Each of Britain's armed forces welcomes transgender people to serve.
The Ministry of Defence told the BBC that President Trump's tweets were "an American issue".
A spokesman added: "We are clear that all LGBT members of our armed forces play a vital role in keeping our nation safe. We will continue to welcome people from a diverse range of backgrounds, including transgender personnel."
BBC defence correspondent Jonathan Beale said the MoD would not provide the number of transgender people serving in the British military, but that one source had told him there were fewer than 10.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40733701
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Inside a US/UK trade deal - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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How would the UK benefit from a trade deal with the US and is it likely to happen?
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Business
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The US has some big healthcare businesses which would be keen to establish a stronger presence in the UK
Relations with the United States were always going to be a high priority for British trade policy post-Brexit.
So no surprise that Liam Fox has gone to Washington to discuss prospects.
The International Trade Secretary is pushing for a bilateral trade liberalisation agreement with the US to take effect when the UK leaves the EU.
And his American hosts seem well disposed to the idea in principle. Better access to the US market would go down well among many UK businesses too.
It is, after all the UK's largest single export market, though well behind the rest of the EU taken together.
The US is also the second largest foreign supplier to the UK. So a freer trade relationship could reduce the cost of those imports.
There was also a great deal of enthusiasm among British business for the EU's negotiations with the US, a project known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Now that British business won't be able to make use of any benefits that might come from that exercise, if it is ever completed, a deal with the US would be helpful for many.
Having said that, many regard it as a higher priority to preserve trade access to the EU as far as possible on existing terms. That is broadly the position of a number of British business lobbies.
There are some areas of any UK/US talks that might be difficult. Experience with the TTIP negotiations gives some clues as to the kind pressures the British government is likely to face at home.
Genetically modified crops - like this maize - is an area for discussion
One is resolving disputes under the agreement, particularly any involving foreign investors.
Many trade and investment agreements provide for tribunals to be established if a foreign investor believes their interests have been harmed by the host government acting in a way that contravenes the agreement.
They can seek financial compensation, and there are many cases where they have been successful. The system is known as investor state dispute settlement (ISDS).
It has been around for decades, but has become more controversial in recent years. Critics see it as giving international businesses unfair leverage over the policies of elected governments.
There will be business lobbies on both sides keen to see some sort of arrangement along these lines and campaigners vigorously opposed.
There is a particular issue for some groups in the UK about how this might affect the National Health Service. It came up in the context of the TTIP negotiations.
The issue was partly whether the agreement might force the British government to privatise health service provision - and also about whether the agreement would make it hard or impossible to reverse any privatisation that did occur.
The issue was that reversing such a move could deprive a foreign health company of business, which campaigners argued could enable it to use the ISDS tribunal system to seek compensation from the host (British) government.
Chlorinated chicken is a familiar feature on US shelves but is banned in the EU
The US has some big healthcare businesses which would be keen to establish a stronger presence in the UK. How well founded that fear would be would depend on the wording of the agreement, but once detailed negotiations get underway it's likely to be brought up.
In the context of TTIP, the idea that it would compromise public provision of healthcare was robustly rejected by, among others the British government, but campaigners did not accept that.
Then there are food issues. Dr Fox has already responded to concerns about American chicken washed with chlorine. That came up in the TTIP talks too and it might well make an appearance again. The practice is widely used in the US to remove microbial contamination, but it is not permitted in the UK.
Beef fed with growth promoting hormones, another practice used in the US, could also be difficult. It's banned in the EU on the basis of health concerns.
This is a trade dispute that has rumbled on for many years and the EU has lost the case in the World Trade Organization, which accepted that the hormones were safe.
The EU has never complied with that ruling and still bans such meat.
Another food issue is genetically modified crops. They do have a presence in the European food chain, partly through animal feed. But the approval process for new GM crops is seen by US farm groups as excessively slow and cumbersome.
Movement on all three of these issues is likely to be important for US negotiators. The National Farmers' Union in the UK is receptive to the idea of reforming the GM approvals process, but the other two are more of a problem.
Nonetheless there are certainly opportunities that businesses in both countries can see. For industry, the relatively straightforward area is tariffs, taxes on imported goods.
They are relatively low in both the US and the UK (which currently adopts the EU's tariff policy). But there are some goods for which they are relatively high (10% for cars entering the UK from outside the EU, for example).
Many industry and financial services groups would also welcome closer regulatory cooperation. It would simplify business for suppliers and could conceivably lower costs for customers.
In any event, for now the UK remains a member of the EU and its common trade policy.
But that certainly doesn't stop negotiators discussing what a post-Brexit deal would look like.
• None What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40718737
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Brain disease affects 99% of NFL players in study - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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All but one former National Football League player in the research were found to have brain disease.
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US & Canada
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The donated brains of college and high school players were also studied
A study of American football players' brains has found that 99% of professional NFL athletes tested had a disease associated with head injuries.
The report published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association studied 202 deceased players - 111 of them from the NFL.
All but one former National Football League player were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
The study is the largest of its kind yet conducted, its authors say.
Dr Ann McKee, director of Boston University's CTE Center, which led the study, cautioned against drawing any immediate conclusions.
"There's a tremendous selection bias," she said, explaining how many of the brains were donated specifically by families who had suspected that their loved ones were suffering from CTE, which researchers believe is caused by repeated blows to the head.
"There's no question that there's a problem in football. That people who play football are at risk for this disease," she told US media.
The neurodegenerative brain disease CTE is typically found in people who have suffered repeated blows to the head, studies have found.
It causes a build-up of so-called tau proteins which can disable neuro-pathways and cause memory loss, impaired judgment, confusion and a variety of other mental health issues.
All 202 players studied - ranging in age from 23 to 89 - were required to have football as their primary exposure to head trauma.
Of the 202 total players, 87% were found to have traces of CTE.
It was also found in 48 of 53 college players and three of the 14 high school players.
Players featured in the study came from every position on the field, and from high school, university, and Canadian leagues, in addition to the NFL.
In a statement the NFL said it was grateful for the study and the "value it adds in the ongoing quest for a better understanding of CTE".
"There are still many unanswered questions relating to the cause, incidence and prevalence of long-term effects of head trauma such as CTE," the organisation continued.
"The NFL is committed to supporting scientific research into CTE and advancing progress in the prevention and treatment of head injuries."
The NFL in 2016 acknowledged for the first time that there is a connection between CTE and football.
In 2015, a federal judge approved a class-action lawsuit brought against the NFL by thousands of players, who had alleged they had suffered brain damage as a result of concussions.
Ron Sinai, of US legal funding firm Nova Legal Funding, said that similar lawsuits are being brought against the NCAA.
"College football players are having many of the same health issues as the pro players. In July 2016 a judge approved a $75 million settlement to resolve many, but not all, of these cases," he said.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40718990
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Sally Anne Bowman killer Mark Dixie admits other attacks - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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Mark Dixie was jailed in 2008 for raping and murdering teenage model Sally Anne Bowman.
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London
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Eighteen-year-old Sally Anne Bowman was murdered in south London in 2005
A man serving a life sentence for raping and murdering teenage model Sally Anne Bowman has admitted attacks on two other women previously.
Mark Dixie, 46, was jailed in 2008 for repeatedly stabbing Miss Bowman then raping her as she lay dead or dying in Croydon, south London in 2005.
Dixie now admits raping a woman in her car in Croydon when he was 16.
The former chef also molested another woman near a railway bridge in 2002 and will be sentenced on 22 September.
A previous hearing was told he ambushed a woman in an isolated car park in 1987 then raped her.
Following the sex attack, he tied her to the back seat of her car then set fire to the front seat.
"He later told police he had set fire to a Tampax," prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC told Southwark Crown Court earlier.
She managed to escape and raised the alarm.
Mark Dixie was jailed for a minimum of 34 years in 2008
Dixie has also admitted charges of indecent assault and GBH after hitting another woman on the head several times with a chef's steel - used to sharpen kitchen blades.
He attacked her near a railway bridge in Croydon and told his victim "I'm going to kill you".
Dragging her up the stairs he proceeded to assault her but was interrupted by another woman who heard the commotion.
"When she asked what was going on, Dixie said 'nothing, nothing, it's just a row with my girlfriend,'" the prosecutor said.
Dixie fled after the victim said: "help, help, he's attacking me".
The teen model's body was found by a skip in Croydon
Mr Aylett QC told the court Dixie had revealed the attacks to police after finally admitting in January 2015 that he had killed Miss Bowman.
Miss Bowman's murder was something Dixie had previously denied.
"He wrote to police indicating he wanted to tell them the truth of what had happened to Sally Anne, because at the trial he said that he was not responsible for her murder," Mr Aylett said.
During the original three-week murder trial Dixie claimed to have found Miss Bowman dead and proceeded to have sex with her lifeless body after he had been on a drink and drugs binge.
The 18-year-old's body was found next to a skip in Croydon in September 2005.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40728210
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London acid attack suspected as men targeted in Bethnal Green - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The two teenagers flagged down police in east London after an unknown liquid was thrown at them.
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London
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Two men have been targeted in a suspected acid attack in east London
The Met Police said the men, thought to be in their late teens, flagged down officers in Bethnal Green at 19:00 BST on Tuesday.
Both men were taken to hospital. Police said it was still not known what liquid was thrown at them in Roman Road.
No arrests have been made. A Met Police spokesman said inquiries were ongoing and a crime scene remained in place in the area.
The condition of the two men is not yet known.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Two men are looked after by emergency services after an acid attack
A video posted on Twitter by Chris Lennon appeared to show a man not wearing a top pouring water over his face and torso while being helped by paramedics.
In the footage, another man is seen sitting on the pavement, also receiving medical assistance.
BBC journalist Neil Brennan, who lives in the area, said the attack happened outside a corner shop, about two minutes from the Tube station and near police and fire stations.
He said people nearby told him two Asian men had been attacked.
"I saw firemen filling two large bottles with water from the fire truck and ferrying it back and forth to the victims," he said.
Firefighters filled bottles of water from their vehicle
A tarpaulin was put in place at the scene
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40720437
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Adobe to kill off Flash plug-in by 2020 - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Once the go-to plug-in for video, the technology has been usurped by more reliable and secure apps.
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Technology
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Adobe's Flash software is regularly updated to remove flaws that cyber-thieves exploit
Adobe Systems has said that it plans to phase out its Flash Player plug-in by the end of 2020.
The technology was once one of the most widely used ways for people to watch video clips and play games online.
But it also attracted much criticism, particularly as flaws in its code meant it became a popular way for hackers to infect computers.
In recent years, much of its functionality has been offered by the rival HTML5 technology.
One of HTML5's benefits is that it can be used to make multimedia content available within webpages without requiring users to install and update a dedicated plug-in.
Apple was one of Flash's most vocal critics. The late Steve Jobs once wrote a public letter about its shortcomings, highlighting concerns about its reliability, security and performance.
The plug-in was never supported by Apple's iOS mobile devices.
Adobe's vice president of product development, Govind Balakrishnan, said the firm had chosen to end Flash because other technologies, such as HTML5, had "matured enough and are capable enough to provide viable alternatives to the Flash player."
He added: "Few technologies have had such a profound and positive impact in the internet era."
Apps developer Malcolm Barclay, who had worked on Flash in its early days, told the BBC: "It fulfilled its promise for a while but it never saw the mobile device revolution coming and ultimately that's what killed it."
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When Adobe acquired Flash in its 2005 purchase of Macromedia, the technology was on more than 98% of personal computers.
But on Chrome, now the most popular web browser, Flash's usage has fallen off dramatically.
In 2014 it was used each day by 80% of desktop users, according to Google. The current figure is just 17%.
"This trend reveals that sites are migrating to open-web technologies, which are faster and more power-efficient than Flash," Google added. "They're also more secure."
Google phased out full support for Flash software at the end of last year.
Mr Balakrishnan said it did not expect the demise of Flash to affect profits at Adobe.
"We think the opportunity for Adobe is greater in a post-Flash world," he said.
But the firm added that it remained committed to support Flash up until the end of 2020 "as customers and partners put their migration plans into place".
There was immediate reaction to the news on Twitter.
• None Google to phase out Flash on Chrome
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40716304
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Reality Check: Has personal debt been growing? - BBC News
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2017-07-26
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The Bank of England's stability chief warns of the dangers of rising personal loans.
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Business
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The Bank of England's financial stability director, Alex Brazier, has been warning about the dangers of rising personal loans.
He said that High Street banks were at risk of entering "a spiral of complacency" about mounting consumer debt levels.
"Household debt - like most things that are good in moderation - can be dangerous in excess," he said.
The Bank of England's own figures put total debt to individuals at about £1.5 trillion, which is an average of £28,000 for everyone over 16 in the UK.
Most of that - about £1.3tn - is made up of mortgages. The rest is for credit cards, overdrafts and loans to buy things like cars, bikes or kitchens.
If you look at what's been happening to lending to individuals, you can see from the chart above that it was rising sharply in the years leading up to the financial crisis, then it flattened out. But in the last couple of years it's started rising again.
Mr Brazier talked about the risk to banks from the £200bn of non-mortgage debt, which has been growing much faster than household incomes.
The credit-card element is £68bn, which is up 18% in the last three years.
Of the remaining £130bn, the big growth area has been car loans, with four-fifths of new cars last year bought using Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) deals, which tend to come from finance companies linked to car manufacturers. The Financial Conduct Authority is already concerned about the amount we're borrowing to buy cars.
Can we afford all this? Household debt including mortgages as a proportion of household income rose from 95% in 1997 to 160% before the financial crisis. It then fell back to about 140% but has now started ticking back up. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicts that it will reach 153% in 2022.
And all of these Bank of England statistics exclude student loans - currently about £89bn of outstanding student debt, which has more than doubled in the last five years.
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40716366
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Football in dark ages over homophobia - Gareth Thomas - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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Ex-Wales rugby star Gareth Thomas says homophobia in football needs to be treated as seriously as racism.
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Wales
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Gareth Thomas tackled homophobia in football in a 2017 investigation for the BBC
Football risks "being left in the dark ages" unless more is done to tackle homophobia in the game, ex-Wales rugby star Gareth Thomas has said.
Thomas came out as gay in 2009 after hiding his sexuality for years.
He admitted it almost drove him to suicide after his wife Jemma left him when he told her the truth.
Thomas said unless homophobia in football was "policed as stringently as racism is policed, then it will always be a problem".
Thursday marks 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality between men aged 21 and over in England and Wales.
The former Cardiff Blues player looked at the issue in a documentary for BBC Wales.
There have been no openly gay professional footballers in the top four divisions since former Norwich striker Justin Fashanu in 1990, who killed himself in 1998.
Thomas spoke to Amal Fashanu, Justin's niece, who made a documentary on the issue in 2012.
"In that five years, from talking to her, absolutely nothing has changed," he said.
A spokesman for the FA said the governing body was "committed to tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in football at every level of the game".
Robbie Rogers, who plays for LA Galaxy, came out after leaving English football
Wales' governing body - the FAW - has been asked for comment.
In recent years, ex-Aston Villa midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger and former Leeds United and United States player Robbie Rogers have revealed they are gay.
Hitzlsperger had retired and Rogers plays in the US' Major League Soccer.
In 2015, 2% of UK men identified as gay or bisexual but none of the approximately 5,000 professional footballers have publicly come out.
Thomas said they would be "walking into the unknown" as governing bodies had not done enough "to create an environment for a player to feel like he can be himself".
While great efforts have been made to tackle racism, Thomas said homophobia was not treated as seriously.
He spoke to a steward who had thrown out a fan for using racist language and asked him if he would have done the same had he used a gay slur.
"His honest answer, which is the truth of it, was very much the case he doubts it would have been," he said.
Gareth Thomas is known as Alfie by Welsh rugby fans
While those throughout the game have supported efforts to rid football of racism, Thomas said "you'll struggle to get a single player to openly talk about his support against homophobia because he stands the backlash of guilt by association.
"It does feel like football is not ready for it. If a player is ready it could be a great success or it could be a great disaster.
"I think they need reassurance that everything will be OK and they'll be judged on their footballing ability and not their sexuality."
The FA said it worked with leagues, LGBT clubs and campaign groups to sanction and educate perpetrators of abuse and encouraged "players to be themselves and support their teammates to do likewise".
Thomas said while there was "no excuse" for homophobic language, he thought some fans singing anti-gay chants felt "they can be somebody who, on the outside of that stadium, would be somebody that they might look down their nose at".
He believes change must come from the top of the game: "Unless football wants to be left behind in the dark ages then it has to [improve].
"But until it's policed as stringently as racism is policed, then it will always be a problem."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40703037
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Old £1 coin spending deadline looms - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The new 12-sided £1 coin now outnumbers the old version, which is soon to be withdrawn.
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Business
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Consumers have less than three months to spend, bank or donate round £1 coins as the new 12-sided version outnumbers the old for the first time.
The Treasury says there are now more of the new £1 coins, which first entered circulation in March, than the old round pound.
From 15 October, shops can refuse the old version of the coin.
However, most banks and Post Office counters will continue to accept them from customers.
"The clock is ticking. We are urging the public to spend, bank or donate their old pound coins and asking businesses who are yet to do so, to update their systems before the old coin ceases to be legal tender," said Andrew Jones, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.
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The Royal Mint is striking 1.5 billion new 12-sided £1 coins, which were introduced to help crack down on counterfeiting.
The Mint has claimed the new £1 is the "most secure coin in the world", replacing the previous £1 coin, of which about one in 40 are thought to be fake.
The new coin has a string of anti-counterfeiting details, including material inside the coin itself which can be detected when electronically scanned by coin-counting or payment machines.
Other security measures include an image that works like a hologram, and micro-sized lettering inside both rims.
Number to enter circulation: 1.5 billion - about 23 per person. Old £1 coins will be melted down to make new ones
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40717386
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Bottle man lands 50 potential dates - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Lonely widower inundated with offers of companionship despite a backlash over his bottle messages.
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South Scotland
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Craig Sullivan cast about 2,000 bottles into the sea and rivers across the UK
A man who sparked outrage for his efforts to find love by releasing thousands of messages in bottles at beauty spots across the UK has said he now has dozens of potential dates.
Widower Craig Sullivan, who is 49 and originally from North Lanarkshire, set 2,000 bottles adrift last week.
However, his efforts resulted in scorn from some who accused him of littering and polluting the environment.
Mr Sullivan said that his quest had attracted 50 offers of companionship.
He was reported to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) after releasing about 200 of the bottles into the River Cree in Dumfries and Galloway.
Sepa said the bottles had since been removed from the river by locals.
Mr Sullivan, who runs a website consultancy firm in London, said he embarked upon his plan to release the bottles following the death of his wife Julia from breast cancer 18 months ago.
He said he wanted to find someone for companionship and that he had been inspired by The Police song Message in a Bottle.
Writing on his blog, he said: "I decided to do something about it.
"Using any of the normal channels for this sort of thing (dating sites, friends, matchmaking services) seemed clichéd or somehow less elegant, less noble in intentions than my own mind."
Mr Sullivan was reported for placing about 200 bottles in the River Cree in Dumfries and Galloway
He added: "So, armed with maps, tidal tables, a motorhome, 4G data, provisions and a week driving around the UK, I might just be able to send them to beaches across the world."
One of the spots Mr Sullivan picked for releasing his bottles was the River Cree, near Newton Stewart.
That resulted in an angry message from one resident who wrote to him in response: "Sepa informed of you fly tipping into the river Cree salmon hatchery, your total disregard for our beautiful clean river is palpable. Don't come back to Newton Stewart your [sic] not welcome. Incidentally all bottles recovered from the Cree hatchery."
In a statement, a spokesman for the environment agency said: "Our officers are comfortable that there is no environmental risk to the River Cree as a result of the bottles being released and, following inquiries, understand almost all of the bottles were contained and removed from the river fairly quickly by local residents."
Mr Sullivan embarked on his week-long journey around the UK on 20 July, stopping in Wales and at Hinkley Point before driving on to Scotland.
However, rather than drawing potential partners, his efforts resulted in a backlash, with one woman writing to him: "Hi Craig, I love how romantic your idea is but please reconsider putting all of these into the sea, lots of us spend hours picking up beach litter.
"How about joining a big beach clean, you may pick up a hobby & meet someone there too? We deserve love & clean beaches!
Another person wrote: "Can we get this half-wit arrested, stopped, educated or something? I simply cannot believe he can put this rubbish in the ocean unpunished."
Mr Sullivan told the BBC that he had stopped releasing the bottles as soon as he became aware of the anger they were causing.
Mr Sullivan said he was inspired by the lyrics of the Police song Message in a Bottle
He said: "The abuse was not very good. In several instances it got out of hand. It was never my intent to harm the environment. It was more accident, naivety as well as stupidity in the execution.
"There was the fact that they all washed up on the beach in Wales at the same time or got caught in the net at the river in Scotland. It was just my intention to send a wee love bottle with a message to someone I had not yet met."
Mr Sullivan said that he had since received 50 responses from women who were interested in knowing him, including one from Ireland and another from the west coast of Scotland.
He added: "I am genuinely sorry for upsetting people, but I do not regret what I did."
Sepa said it was satisfied that the issue had been resolved and said that it did not intend to pursue any further action against Mr Sullivan.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-40738484
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Residents angry over 'crazy' London driveway fines - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Tickets have been placed on cars in a Gants Hill street for obstructing the road's pavement.
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London
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Cars are receiving fines for parking more than 50cm from the edge of their drives
Residents in a London street have criticised the council for issuing their cars with "crazy fines" when they are parked on private drives.
Vehicles parked on drives in Roll Gardens, Gants Hill, have been ticketed as they "slightly obstruct the road's pavement".
The short drives, built in the 1940s, mean most modern cars overhang the pavement.
Redbridge Council said some residents are "clearly obstructing the pavement".
Catherine Meletiou, a resident on the street, said the fines were "crazy".
She added: "It's absolute madness. If the car is not small it's going to come over the driveway and onto the footpath, there's no allowances for that."
Irshad Nabee said there had never been a problem in the area in 40 years
Irshad Nabee, Roll Gardens Neighbourhood Association chairman, said: "For the greater part of 40 years, this has not been a problem.
"But since July, we have seen a spate of parking fines. I don't know where the council expect us to park."
Local councillor Karen Packer said the residents had no warning or consultation about the issue.
She suggested a potential solution was to introduce a residents only permit scheme or a temporary suspension of all ticketing in the area.
"These are hard working people and one ticket is hard for some to fit in their weekly financial budget, let alone two, three or even four in some cases."
Linda Horwood, who has lived on the street for 45 years, said she received a fine of £110 for the first time since moving to the area.
"It's totally unfair, and to make sure I'm not overhanging too much I'm parking my car so close to my house that I'm bashing it every time I park."
Redbridge Council said tickets could be issued for parking "more than 50cm from the edge of the carriageway and not within a designated parking space".
A spokesman said the majority of residents in Gants Hill were "making every effort to use the driveway space available to them and parking without causing an issue".
"Residents have told us they are confused about the parking guidelines and we will be working with them to offer advice to avoid them receiving future fines."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40729398
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Green backlash against 'progressive alliance' - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Parties worked together to boost Labour's chances at the election - but some feel they got nothing back.
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UK Politics
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Left-leaning parties worked together to cut Theresa May's majority at the general election - was it a one-off or is the "progressive alliance" here to stay?
One of the many surprises on 8 June was how Britain appeared to have turned the clock back to the era of two party politics, with 82% of voters casting their ballot for Labour or the Conservatives.
Some of the surge in Labour's support may have been down to tactical voting, with left-leaning voters spooked by the prospect of a huge Conservative majority deciding to back whichever party they believed stood the best chance of beating the Conservatives in their constituency. Which, in most cases, was Labour.
But in some parts of the country the choice was made easier for them.
Local electoral deals saw some would-be election candidates stand aside to avoid splitting the "anti-Tory" vote.
But despite warm words from some Labour and Lib Dem MPs, one party ended up doing most of the heavy lifting.
Of the 41 seats listed by the Progressive Alliance, one of the organisations promoting tactical voting and cross-party cooperation, where "progressive candidates have stood aside to help another progressive candidate defeat the Tories", 38 of them were Greens, two were Lib Dems and one represented the Women's Equality Party.
Not one Labour candidate stood aside, even though it was the Labour Party that got most of the benefit, in terms of extra votes and seats.
The Green Party's co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley got behind the idea of electoral alliances as a way of forcing proportional representation on to the political agenda, having spent years getting nowhere with efforts to get candidates that back electoral reform elected through first-past-the-post.
Last year's Richmond Park by-election, which saw the Greens stand aside to help Lib Dem Sarah Olney defeat the then (and future) Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, had shown them what was possible and they had the backing of Green party members.
But the Labour and Lib Dem leaderships refused to play ball, rejecting their offer of a formal deal at June's snap election out of hand.
Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell told the BBC: "I just think the electorate would be concerned if they thought parties were stitching up elections privately. I don't think that's the way forward. The way forward is to support and vote for the Labour Party."
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron was equally dismissive, despite support for the idea among some in his party, saying the "only plausible route of any kind towards the Conservatives not winning a majority" was having a sizable Liberal Democrat group of MPs.
It was left to local Green parties to strike their own deals, if they could.
It worked in some places, most notably Brighton Pavilion, where Caroline Lucas doubled her majority, after the Lib Dem candidate stood aside, as payback for Green support in Richmond Park.
Sarah Olney won the Richmond by-election but lost the seat at the general election
But her result was a rare bright spot in a dismal night for the Greens, who failed to gain any of their other target seats, and saw their vote drop from 1.1 million in 2015 to just over 500,000.
It was a bad night for smaller parties in general. UKIP saw an even more dramatic collapse in its share of the vote than the Greens.
The Lib Dems also saw their vote share squeezed - but only the Greens stood aside in significant numbers to aid other parties.
On the day after the election, the Green Party's co-leader Jonathan Bartley hailed the "brave" decision by 24 Green candidates in marginal seats to stand aside, which he said had made a "big difference to the election result".
But that's not how some of the candidates-that-never-were felt.
Green Party activist Jill Perry, who opted not to stand in Workington, said she now has "regrets" about doing so because she does not think it made any difference to the result, which saw the Labour candidate Sue Hayman retain the seat with a slightly reduced majority.
It also deprived local Green members and supporters - including herself - of the opportunity to vote for their party, which on nuclear power, nuclear weapons and airport expansion, to name just a few issues, is diametrically opposed to the official Labour position.
"I voted with a heavy heart because, obviously, I could not vote Green," she says.
"It was a very difficult decision. It wasn't a personal decision, it was a group decision, but the group was very divided with strong feelings on both sides.
"Really, I don't think it made any difference where candidates stood down" because a lot of people voted tactically to prevent the Conservatives getting a "massive majority" and, as a result, "everybody went back into the Conservative and Labour silos".
The local Labour Party appreciated their gesture but Greens had been "put under an awful lot of pressure" by Labour activists in areas where they refused to stand aside, she added, and some Labour activists had been "very aggressive towards them".
"In solidarity with those groups, I think we should stand next time," said Ms Perry.
Andy D'Agorne, leader of the Green group on York City Council, told the BBC he does not regret standing aside for Labour at the general election but he would not do it again, unless Labour was committed to proportional representation.
A seven way debate preceded a return to two-party politics
The Greens have strong support in York, gaining 10% of the vote at the 2015 general election in York Central, but Mr D'Agorne said the unexpected surge in the Labour vote has made it a safe seat for Jeremy Corbyn's party, rendering any future gestures of solidarity unnecessary.
Nicole Haydock, co-ordinator of Bury Green Party, which opted not to run candidates in June, said the "backlash in the party after the election" was because "most people thought the progressive alliance meant we are standing down where Labour has a chance of winning" when it was actually about getting an agreement to back proportional representation.
Green activist John Coyne refused to stand aside in Wirral West, despite pressure from local Labour activists and members of Momentum, to help Labour's Margaret Greenwood hang on to the seat she had won from Tory Esther McVey by 417 votes in 2015.
The 429 votes Mr Coyne received in June might have made all the difference in another close contest, but Ms Greenwood was returned as Wirral West's MP with a majority of 5,365.
Mr Coyne said: "If Labour said, 'yes we want PR' then that would make a big difference but all that's happened in discussions about alliances is that there has been an attempt to get people switching from Green to Labour, there has been no element of reciprocity at all, in this relationship.
"And for that reason, if no other, I think there is no real future for it."
The BBC understands Liverpool Green Party plans to table a motion at the party's annual conference in October to rule out future alliances unless there is a PR deal on offer.
There is also the practical concern that the electoral pacts have hit the Green Party in the wallet, as Short Money is handed out by Parliament in line with the number of votes parties get.
In 2016/17 the Green Party of England and Wales got £216,994 in Short Money. It will be a lot less this year.
The progressive alliance borrowed tactics from Bernie Sanders' campaign
Caroline Lucas said it was time for "reflection and planning" in the Green Party and has promised to listen to the membership about future electoral deals.
She said it was "clear" that the local Green activists who stood aside in June "helped cut down the Conservative majority".
But she added: "The commitment to forming alliances was always about advancing significant electoral reform to give every voter a voice.
"We want to forge a new kind of politics, and simply tactical voting under first past the post does not even begin to rise to that challenge.
"Sadly there was no leadership from either Labour or the Liberal Democrats to put the urgent need for a fairer voting system at the heart of this election nationally."
Frances Foley, campaign co-ordinator of Compass, the cross-party pressure group that set up the Progressive Alliance website and used tactics and personnel borrowed from Bernie Sanders in the US to promote it around the country, said she could understand how some Greens felt "chastened" by the drop in their party's vote share.
But, she added, "despite that there is still a really strong appetite for the progressive alliance in the Green Party".
There was also far more enthusiasm for cross-party cooperation, and proportional representation, among Labour activists than the party leadership, she claimed, and that change would eventually come "from the ground up".
According to Compass's own research, "progressive" candidates performed 5.7% better where there was an electoral deal in place.
She said the Labour leadership should view their success on 8 June as a "shared victory," as a handful of Labour MPs, such as Clive Lewis, in Norwich South, and Tulip Siddiq, in Hampstead and Kilburn, had done - and it would be a mistake for them to believe they could win a general election on their own.
To supporters like Ms Foley, the progressive alliance holds out the prospect of an end to petty tribal politics, as parties with similar world views - pro-European, anti-austerity, greenish - work together for what they see as the "common good".
The combined forces of the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Lib Dems, Labour and the Green Party, as well as smaller outfits like the Women's Equality Party and the NHS party, add up to a "progressive" majority, they argue. More than enough to beat what they call the "regressive alliance" of the Tories, UKIP and the Ulster Unionists.
But to have any future it is going to take a major change in attitude at the top of the Labour Party to convince the Greens and other smaller parties it is worth the sacrifice.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40586329
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Brexit: UK-EU freedom of movement 'to end in March 2019' - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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EU workers who move to the UK will have to register after Brexit, the home secretary says.
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UK Politics
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Free movement of people between the EU and UK will end in March 2019, UK government ministers have said.
From that date EU workers moving to the UK will have to register, at least until a permanent post-Brexit immigration policy is put in place.
But Home Secretary Amber Rudd has sought to reassure business there will not be a "cliff edge" in terms of employing foreign workers after Brexit.
She said policy would be evidence-based and take into account economic impact.
The CBI said businesses "urgently" needed to know what EU migration would look like, both in any "transitional" period after March 2019 and beyond.
Immigration was one of the central topics of last year's EU referendum campaign, and ministers have promised to "take back control" of the UK's borders as they negotiate Brexit.
The UK is currently due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019, but there has been increasing talk of a "transitional" (or "implementation") stage of around two years to smooth the Brexit process.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Home Office minister Brandon Lewis said details of how the government would manage immigration after Brexit would be revealed in a white paper later this year, and that the immigration bill would go through Parliament in 2018.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Freedom of movement will end "in the spring of 2019", immigration minister Brandon Lewis tells Today
Mr Lewis said it was a "simple matter of fact" that EU free movement rules would not apply after 2019.
More detail of what would happen was later provided by the home secretary, with Ms Rudd, speaking during a visit to Troon, South Ayrshire, saying the "implementation phase" would involve new EU workers registering their details when they come to the UK.
She also said the government had promised an "extensive" consultation to listen to the views of businesses, unions and universities.
The Home Office has asked the Migration Advisory Committee to study the "economic and social costs and benefits of EU migration to the UK economy", its impact on competitiveness, and whether there would be benefits to focusing migration on high-skilled jobs. It is due to report back by September 2018 - six months before Brexit.
The home secretary said: "We will ensure we continue to attract those who benefit us economically, socially and culturally.
"But, at the same time, our new immigration system will give us control of the volume of people coming here - giving the public confidence we are applying our own rules on who we want to come to the UK and helping us to bring down net migration to sustainable levels."
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. I'm "flabbergasted" it has taken 13 months to ask "basic questions" about EU migration, says Yvette Cooper
Speaking in Sydney, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said he was unaware of the report that has been commissioned, adding that immigration had been "fantastic for the energy and dynamism of the economy" but "that doesn't mean that you can't control it".
For Labour, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said there was "far too much heat and not enough light about immigration, so any truly objective and well-informed analysis must be welcome".
But she raised concerns about the timescale for the Migration Advisory Committee report: "Six months before Brexit will not be enough time to structure a new immigration system."
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Sir Ed Davey said the move would "do nothing to reassure the hospitals that are already seeing record numbers of EU nurses leaving, or the companies struggling to recruit the staff they need".
"The NHS, businesses and universities that depend on European citizens need answers now, not in another 14 months' time," he added.
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The CBI said commissioning the report was a "sensible first step", adding: "Workers from across Europe strengthen our businesses and help our public services run more smoothly - any new migration system should protect these benefits while restoring public confidence."
But the Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the Commons home affairs committee, said it was "staggering" that it had taken the government a year since the EU referendum to commission it.
And property developer Richard Tice, co-chairman of Leave Means Leave, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "This commission should be reporting by this Christmas, not by next September. It's completely unacceptable for this to drag on ... the government needs to rapidly accelerate this."
Manufacturers' organisation EEF said the migration committee was "best placed" to advise on what EU migration should look like after Brexit.
Both EEF and the CBI called for an immediate resolution of the question of the status of EU nationals already living in the UK.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40734504
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Sex on plane Bristol teacher struck off from profession - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Eleanor Wilson, 28, had sex with a male pupil in an aeroplane toilet while on a school trip.
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Bristol
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A teacher who had sex with a student in a plane toilet on a school trip has been banned from the profession.
Eleanor Wilson, 28, who worked in Bristol, kissed the pupil and drank alcohol with him while on the flight.
A National College for Teaching & Leadership (NCTL) panel found she engaged in sexual activity with a male pupil in August 2015.
The panel's report found her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and banned her from teaching indefinitely.
The NCTL found an "inappropriate relationship" took place with the pupil in 2015/16 when she met him in her office, shared her mobile number with him, took him on outings, drank alcohol with him and kissed him on more than one occasion.
Miss Wilson also encouraged the pupil, who has not been identified, to hide their relationship and lied about it when an investigation into the allegations was undertaken by the school, the panel said.
The panel ruled she "fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession".
The teacher, who had denied the allegations, was sacked by the school last year and was not present at the NCTL hearing.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-40733014
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Girl, 15, raped twice at Witton railway station in separate attacks - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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A teenager is attacked by a man at a train station and then by the driver of a car she flagged down.
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Birmingham & Black Country
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Police are urging anyone who saw the girls around the time of the attacks to come forward
A girl of 15 was raped at a train station in Birmingham before being sexually assaulted by the driver of a car she flagged down to help her.
Detectives called the two attacks at Witton station "horrifying" and said they were launching a major manhunt.
The teenager was with a friend when she was approached by a man who led her to a secluded part of the station and raped her.
Shortly after she flagged down a passing car and was assaulted again.
British Transport Police and West Midlands Police are treating it as two separate reports of rape.
The first attacker is described by police as an Asian man in his early 20s with light skin, brown eyes, skinny build and about 6ft tall.
Police said the second man was also Asian and in his early 20s and about 5ft 6in to 5ft 7in tall. He was of a large build, with a beard and wore a blue jumper and black jeans.
The attacks happened between 19:00 BST on Tuesday and 02:00 on Wednesday.
CCTV has been seized and is being investigated.
Det Ch Insp Tony Fitzpatrick said: "This was a horrifying ordeal for this young girl and we have specially trained officers supporting her.
"It is now vitally important we investigate exactly what happened on Wednesday morning as well as identifying offenders for both of these awful incidents.
"I would be keen to speak with anyone who may have been in the area at the time. If you were passing by the station and saw two girls walking with an older man, then please get in touch immediately.
"Likewise, if you saw any suspicious vehicles close to Witton station close to 2am then please get in touch as soon as possible. Your information could prove vital in our enquiries to identify the perpetrators."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-40739662
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Drinking a few times a week linked to lower diabetes risk - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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Wine can protect against the condition - but too much is still a bad thing, the research suggests.
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Health
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Raising a glass to the findings of the Danish study?
Drinking three to four times a week has been linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes than never drinking, Danish researchers suggest.
Wine appears to be particularly beneficial, probably as it plays a role in helping to manage blood sugar, the study, published in Diabetologia, says.
They surveyed more than 70,000 people on their alcohol intake - how much and how often they drank.
But experts said this wasn't a "green light" to drink more than recommended.
And Public Health England warned that consuming alcohol contributed to a vast number of other serious diseases, including some cancers, heart and liver disease.
"People should keep this in mind when thinking about how much they drink," a spokeswoman said.
Prof Janne Tolstrup, from the National Institute of Public Health of the University of Southern Denmark, who led the research, said: "We found that drinking frequency has an independent effect from the amount of alcohol taken.
"We can see it's a better effect to drink the alcohol in four portions rather than all at once."
After around five years, study participants were followed up and a total of 859 men and 887 women group had developed diabetes - either type 1 or the more common type 2.
The researchers concluded that drinking moderately three to four times a week was linked to a 32% reduced risk of diabetes in women, and 27% in men, compared with people drinking on less than one day a week.
Red wine is thought to help with the management of blood sugar
Findings also suggest that not all types of alcohol had the same effect.
Wine appeared to be particularly beneficial because polyphenols, particularly in red wine, play a role in helping to manage blood sugar.
When it came to drinking beer, men having one to six beers a week lowered their risk of diabetes by 21%, compared to men who drank less than one beer a week - but there was no impact on women's risk.
Meanwhile, a high intake of spirits among women seemed to significantly increase their risk of diabetes - but there was no effect in men.
Unlike other studies, this research did not find a link between binge drinking and diabetes.
Prof Tolstrup said this could be down to the small number of participants that reported binge drinking, which was defined as drinking five drinks or more on one occasion.
Dr Emily Burns, head of research communications at Diabetes UK, said people needed to be wary as "the impact of regular alcohol consumption on the risk of type 2 will be different from one person to the next".
While the findings were interesting she said they "wouldn't recommend people see them as a green light to drink in excess of the existing NHS guidelines".
That advice suggests that men and women should drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week - equivalent to six pints of average strength beer or 10 small glasses of low strength wine - over the course of three days or more, with some days being alcohol-free.
Rosanna O'Connor, director of drugs, alcohol and tobacco at Public Health England, said: "It is not helpful to talk about the effect of alcohol consumption on diabetes alone.
"Consuming alcohol contributes to a vast number of other serious diseases, including some cancers, heart disease and liver disease, so people should keep this in mind when thinking about how much they drink."
Prof Tolstrup and her team have used the same survey to research the effect of alcohol on other conditions.
They found that drinking moderately a few times a week was linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disorders, such as heart attack and stroke.
But consuming any amount of alcohol increased the risk of developing gastrointestinal diseases, such as alcohol liver disease and pancreatitis.
Prof Tolstrup added: "Alcohol is associated with 50 different conditions, so we're not saying 'go ahead and drink alcohol'."
Update 7 September 2017: This article has been updated to clarify that while Danish researchers found no causal relationship between drinking and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, they did find that those who drink three to four times a week are less likely than those who never drink to develop diabetes.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40740247
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Newspaper headlines: Irish border 'setback' and Grenfell manslaughter probe - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Stories about Brexit, ill baby Charlie Gard and the possibility of a Grenfell Tower manslaughter case feature on the front pages.
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The Papers
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Theresa May held talks with Leo Varadkar at Downing Street in June
The Times says Prime Minister Theresa May faces a new setback in her Brexit negotiations after the Irish government said her plan for free trade between the border that separates the north and south is unworkable.
The paper says on its front page the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, wants the Irish Sea to become the post-Brexit border with customs and immigration checks to be located at ports and airports instead.
UK officials were said to be taken aback by Dublin's change in tone, expressed at an EU summit in Brussels last week.
The Financial Times reports the Chancellor Philip Hammond is seeking a transitional deal with the EU that he wants to break down into two phases.
The paper understands he told business leaders in Downing Street on Monday this would start with what is been described as an "off-the-shelf" period - rather than a new legal framework for an interim agreement.
This would allow the UK to continue having full access to the single market and the customs union, while a new trade deal was finalised.
The Daily Telegraph fears a study commissioned by the Home Secretary Amber Rudd to assess the contribution of EU nationals to the British economy may be used to set up the case for continued free movement.
In an editorial, the paper say it is concerned that what it calls a "trap" could be set at the last minute because the findings will not be published until six months before Brexit.
The Daily Mail seizes on contradictory remarks from Ms Rudd, who suggested free movement could continue for a transitional period, and the immigration minister, Brandon Lewis, who said it should end when the UK leaves the EU in 2019.
The paper calls this a "shambles", and says it not only shakes public confidence, but gives ammunition to Brussels negotiators.
The Daily Mirror says Brexit was never going to be easy but it did expect the government to have a coherent plan; instead we have more positions than the Kama Sutra.
For the Times a strategy of sorts has been announced. The paper calls on ministers to confer more carefully with business to avoid sowing confusion among employers planning for the future.
The Sun says the Ministry of Justice suffered "outright shame" when it published figures which show that more than 70 inmates were freed from prisons in England and Wales by mistake last year.
The paper claims an average of 20 prison guards are beaten up each day and it is of the opinion that too many jails are lawless, overcrowded cesspits dramatically worsened by a shortage of staff.
The Daily Mirror says ministers need to wake up to the fact that our "failing" overcrowded jails need fundamental reform.
"Manslaughter" is the Daily Mail's front page headline after police found "reasonable grounds" to consider corporate manslaughter charges in connection with the fire at Grenfell Tower which killed at least 80 people.
The paper describes this as a "dramatic development" which means town hall chiefs at Kensington and Chelsea in west London face police interviews over claims they ignored repeated safety warnings.
Yvette Williams from the campaign group Justice4Grenfell tells the Guardian the decision will restore some faith in the police investigation but she would like to see individuals prosecuted as well.
Angelina Jolie features in several papers after she revealed how a Cambodian child was cast in her film about the Khmer Rouge.
The Daily Express says the Hollywood actress, director and United Nations goodwill ambassador has sparked a "bizarre child actor row".
The Daily Telegraph reports the auditions involved the crew giving impoverished youngsters money which was then snatched away, in order for the children to come up with a reason for wanting the cash.
Jolie is quoted in the Daily Mail saying she wanted to elicit an "authentic connection to pain" and found a girl who said her family did not have enough money for a nice funeral for her grandfather.
But critics on social media have accused the star of "torturing children" and using a "monstrous" and "cruel" psychological casting game.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-40748107
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Pakistan village council orders 'revenge rape' of girl - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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A teenager in Multan is raped by order of a village council after her brother was accused of rape.
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Asia
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A villager points to the house where a teenage girl was raped in Muzaffarabad, Multan
Some 20 people from Multan, Pakistan, have been arrested for ordering the rape of a teenage girl, in revenge for a rape her brother allegedly committed.
Police said the families of the two girls are related.
Members of both had joined forces to decide what should be done.
"A jirga [village council] had ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl as punishment, as her brother had raped a 12-year-old," police official Allah Baksh told AFP.
He said the village council was approached earlier this month by a man who said his 12-year-old sister had been raped by their cousin.
The council then ordered the complainant to rape the sister of the accused in return - which police say he did.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that the girl was forced to appear before the group and raped in front of them and her parents.
The mothers of the two girls later filed complaints at the local police station.
Medical examinations have confirmed rape in both cases.
Reports suggest the second girl was raped in front of the family council
Another officer, Ahsan Younas, told BBC Urdu that the first girl to be raped was aged between 12 and 14. The victim of the revenge rape is said to be 16 or 17.
He said police had registered a complaint against 25 people, and that the suspect accused of raping the 12-year-old was still at large.
While some reports say the group that ordered the rape was a jirga - or village council - BBC sources said it was actually formed by members of the two families.
Jirgas, a kind of council formed of local elders, often settle disputes in rural Pakistan. However, they are illegal and have been condemned for a series of controversial rulings - including ordering so-called "honour killings" and past incidents of "revenge rape".
In 2002, a jirga ordered the gang rape of 28-year-old Mukhtar Mai, whose 12-year-old brother was accused of an affair with an older woman.
Mukhtar Mai, pictured in 2011, was gang-raped by order of a tribal council
Ms Mai took her rapists to court - an act of extraordinary courage in Pakistan, where sexual assault victims still face considerable stigma.
When their convictions were overturned by Pakistan's Supreme Court, she was offered many ways out of the country. However, she chose to stay in her village and start a girls' school and a women's refuge yards away from where she was raped.
Ms Mai is now a prominent women's rights activist, and her story inspired an opera, "Thumbprint", which opened in New York in 2014.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-40731035
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Switzerland's Lavertezzo overrun with tourists after video goes viral - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Village dubbed the "Maldives of Milan" is being turned into an "open air toilet", residents say.
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Europe
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. The video (in Italian) showing the river next to Lavertezzo, in Switzerland, has gone viral
Most people would be delighted if their home town was compared to the Maldives, one of the world's top beauty spots.
But not, it seems, those living in the village of Lavertezzo, Switzerland.
Residents here are thoroughly fed up with a recent influx of tourists, who they accuse of turning their idyllic valley into "an open air toilet".
This latest stream of tourists were all apparently inspired by a minute-long video, which has been watched 2.6m times so far, dubbing the area "the Maldives of Milan".
In it, filmmaker Marco Capedri and his friend Federico Sambruni frolic in the crystal clear waters of the Verzasca river, in the shadow of an imposing double-arched stone bridge.
"A magnificent canyon crossed with emerald waters - one hour from Milan and 45 minutes from Varese," Mr Capedri's post proclaimed.
With that, Lavertezzo's residents - who are no strangers to tourists - found themselves overwhelmed by Italians crossing the border in search of a taste of paradise.
"I thought the valley had exploded," one resident told Ticino News [in Italian].
Another accused the tourists, who came from all over, of turning the valley into "an outdoor toilet" and "running semi-naked down the street". The reporter, meanwhile, noted the "socks, cigarettes and cans" left behind by the day-trippers.
The town's mayor, Roberto Bacciarini, was more circumspect in his response.
Speaking to Italian newspaper Repubblica [in Italian], he admitted the video had done "a good job" in attracting people to the area, but added: "[Mr Capedri] would do us a favour if he asked his compatriots to park their cars in an orderly manner, and respect the rules of the place."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40730546
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British Museum 'loses' £750,000 Cartier diamond ring - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The Cartier ring was reported missing in August 2011 but its loss has only just been revealed.
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London
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The Cartier ring is thought to have been given to the museum by an anonymous donor
A £750,000 diamond ring, missing from the British Museum for six years, has only now been registered as lost.
Thought to have been bequeathed to the museum by an anonymous donor, the Cartier ring was reported missing to the police in 2011.
The loss was revealed with the publication of museum's annual accounts where its cost has been written off.
A spokesperson said it was museum procedure to report losses five years after discovering a missing piece.
The ring was not on public display when it went missing, the museum said.
The loss of a £750,000 Cartier ring only came to light with the publication of the British Museum's latest accounts
A spokesperson said: "The ring was found missing from its proper location by British Museum staff in August 2011.
"British Museum procedure, as agreed by trustees, requires the ring formally to be reported as lost five years after the initial discovery of its absence.
"The museum has since reviewed its security and collections management procedures and dedicated significant investment to improved security across the estate."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40738239
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Cody-Anne Jackson jailed for suffocating daughter, 2 - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Macey Hogan was killed after her mum sent the toddler's father "one last picture" of her.
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Stoke & Staffordshire
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Cody-Anne Jackson sent a photo of her daughter Macey Hogan before killing her
A mum who suffocated her two-year-old daughter after sending the toddler's father "one last picture" of her has been jailed for a minimum of 16 years.
Cody-Anne Jackson killed Macey Hogan after texting her ex a message reading: "Sorry, just thought you deserved one last picture and memory of her."
The 20-year-old, of Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent, denied murder but changed her plea part-way through her trial.
She was jailed for life at Stafford Crown Court.
His Honour Judge Michael Chambers QC told the young mother she had committed a "wicked and appalling act".
She also tried to take her own life because she was angry and resentful towards Macey's father Paul Hogan after he ended their relationship a week earlier, the court heard.
Staffordshire Police released the harrowing 999 call made by Jackson after she smothered the little girl.
The little girl's body was found on the floor in a bedroom on the morning of 10 October last year after officers broke into her home.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Police were called after the chilling 999 call from the girl's mother
Jackson, who was in the same room attempting CPR, was found with "superficial" chest, neck and wrist injuries.
She had written a suicide note before the killing, stating: "There's nothing for me or Macey."
Before changing her plea, Jackson claimed she woke up and found Macey's cold body next to her in bed, in between two pillows.
Police broke in through the front door at the house in Packett Street, Fenton
Judge Chambers, the Recorder of Stafford, told her: "You have had the courage to plead guilty and recognise the enormity of what you have done.
"I accept that may not have come easy but this remains a very serious case - for a mother to kill her young child, who depends on her for protection above all others, is a wicked and appalling act.
"This is not a case where you suffered from mental illness. The clear inference is that you thought about killing yourself and decided to kill Macey as well to prevent her having a life without a mother.
"That was an expression of utter self-absorption."
Det Insp Dan Ison, of Staffordshire Police, said: "This was not a killing that occurred due to a struggling single parent, nor was it a killing where in some perverse way it was felt that Macey was being protected from someone or something.
"This was a killing that was cold and callous and set to exact revenge on Paul Hogan as he had broken off the relationship with Cody-Anne Jackson."
"It is absolutely unforgivable that a beautiful and healthy child has had her life taken away and I am sorry for the loss that this has left for Paul and his family."
An NSPCC spokesperson said: "Macey Hogan, a defenceless toddler, was robbed of a childhood that should have been filled with awe and wonder.
"Instead of bringing this happiness into her daughter's life, Cody-Anne Jackson ended it. It is only right that she has faced the full force of the law."
• None Child killer sent 'last photo' to her ex
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-40739654
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Ohio State Fair ride accident kills one and injures several - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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A spinning pendulum ride tossed its passengers into the air at high speed, officials say.
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US & Canada
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This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Riders were catapulted into the air, witnesses said
One person has been killed and several injured after an accident on a ride at the Ohio State Fair.
Fire chief Steve Martin told local media outlets that victims were thrown from the "fireball" spinning pendulum ride in the city of Columbus.
Three of the injured are in a critical condition, officials said.
State Governor John Kasich confirmed at least one death, and said he had ordered all fair rides shut until safety inspections were carried out.
He also said a full investigation would be carried out.
The fireball ride swings from side to side while simultaneously spinning passengers in circles at high speed. It is known by the name "afterburner" in European markets.
Speaking to reporters, a doctor treating some victims said: "Passengers were ejected at high speed with high energy, many feet - at least 20 or 30, if not more - into the air, and then crashed at a significant distance from the ride."
He said the speed of the impact could be similar to a vehicle crash.
A video circulating online appeared to show one passenger carriage breaking loose near the bottom of its pendulum swing, tossing passengers into the air as it rose again.
The video has not been independently verified.
The state fair confirmed on Twitter that there was "a report of a ride incident" but provided no further details.
Local NBC affiliate WCMH reported that one of the injured is a 13-year-old child. Multiple local news outlets have said the deceased is an 18-year-old.
The accident took place on Wednesday evening, the opening day of the fair.
The Columbus Dispatch reported that safety inspections of the rides had taken place earlier in the week.
Chief inspector Mike Vartorella said: "My grandchildren ride this equipment… our guys do not rush through this stuff. We look at it, we take care of it, we pretend it's our own."
He said the ride was inspected "three or four times" in the past two days by both his own inspectors and a "third party".
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40736240
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Rebekah Wilson: Ex-GB Olympic bobsleigher says pressure led to self-harm - BBC Sport
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2017-07-27
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British former Olympic bobsleigher Rebekah Wilson tells BBC Sport she self-harmed as she struggled to cope with the demands of elite sport.
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A British Winter Olympic athlete has told how she self-harmed as she struggled to cope with the demands of elite competition.
Rebekah Wilson, a member of Team GB's two-woman bobsleigh crew at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, told BBC Sport she would secretly cut - and even try to concuss - herself as the "intense pressure" of training took its toll.
Such were the problems she faced, she quit the sport after Sochi aged just 23, and spent the next 18 months receiving treatment at a specialist mental health hospital.
Wilson says she has spoken out in order to raise awareness of the strain placed on athletes.
"It goes on a lot more than we allow ourselves to think," she said.
The British Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association (BBSA) said it was unable to comment about Wilson specifically because of patient confidentiality.
But it said it "recognises that elite sport features both physical and mental demands" and it provided access to specialist support in both areas.
In recent months, a third of UK Sport-funded governing bodies have had to confront athlete welfare issues or complaints, raising fears medal success has come at the expense of duty of care.
Sports minister Tracey Crouch told BBC Sport she would be meeting with governing bodies in a bid to tackle the issue.
• None Should welfare come before winning?
'Self-worth comes down to hundredths of seconds'
A promising junior sprinter, Wilson turned to bobsleigh as a teenager and won the World Junior Championship in 2011. She dreamed of becoming an Olympian.
But, having become a full-time professional, she says the demands of the GB squad's training regime in Bath, and life on the road competing, became too much.
She struggled with mental health issues and says athletes were "treated as a piece of data, a statistic" in the pursuit of medals and funding.
"Every move you made was analysed," she said. "If you were not good enough, it was, 'you need to up it, have a look at this feedback, this analysis'.
"That's a difficult pressure when you're just trying to do your best. It's quite cold - not a friendly environment.
"You are scared almost. Scared to say, 'actually, I shouldn't be being treated like this', because your place is on the line, your whole self-worth and career is going down to tenths and hundredths of seconds.
"It was too much for a young girl at the age of 19 who was just trying to do the best she could do."
Wilson says the "strong, muscular" image of an athlete representing their country masked the vulnerability she was feeling.
She was self-harming in an attempt to relieve the pressure and deal with the lack of support, but hiding it from her team-mates and coaches.
"Because I knew I had a race at the end of the week, and I'd be putting on my British kit, I had to hold it together," she said.
"I would try and find anything I could to hurt myself. I would cut the top of my arms and my legs - anywhere where I could put a bit of tape and nobody would really notice.
"And I was banging my head against a wall trying to knock myself out, just to stop that pressure."
Wilson rejects the notion her actions were a cry for help, because the wounds were not obvious and she was not telling anyone about them.
Asked to what extent the sport itself brought on her mental health issues, she said: "I would say that I'm probably a little bit predisposed to finding things difficult.
"The extent of what I was doing… that was certainly the environment and the sport.
"It was because I felt like there was no other outlet. It was intense. You didn't feel like you were being listened to as an athlete."
Wilson took a year out in a bid to get herself well again, keeping her issues a secret from her coaches and telling them she would come back fitter and stronger.
She does not blame them or consider it their fault - either then or now - and says her coach was very supportive.
Wilson rejoined the Olympic squad a year later, gaining selection for Sochi, where she and partner Paula Walker finished 12th, missing their top-eight performance target set by UK Sport.
Still suffering with her mental health, she decided she needed to walk away from the sport for good and seek specialist help.
Wilson spent 18 months going in and out of The Priory - a renowned mental health hospital - in what she called an attempt to "build myself back up".
She says it came to be recognised that the pressure of sport is what had made her so unwell.
"I'd attributed every ounce of self-worth I had to sport and to 0.01 of a second," Wilson said. "It was a psychological battle that I wasn't good enough and I didn't get a medal.
"Funding was put in place so I could go to see a psychologist, so there was a support in place. But you're still in that environment, with the same people around you and the same issues.
"You're almost just putting bandages or plasters on to something that is ongoing so I realised I needed to just remove myself because I'd had enough and I wasn't well.
"My team-mate Paula was retiring - she and I had really held each other together that year - so without her there could I get that small amount of enjoyment from it any more? I didn't think so."
'Sport does not define me'
Wilson is now a programme manager with the Diane Modahl Foundation in Manchester, and plays rugby for Waterloo Ladies in the Women's Premiership.
She can still clock 11.77 seconds for the 100m but largely plays sport for fun now - although she says she is considering trying to break into the GB rugby sevens squad for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
"Since coming out of bobsleigh, I've gone from strength to strength," she said.
"It was difficult because a lot of people would say, 'you've got two, three, four more Olympics in you', but spending that time away and rebuilding myself, I found that I'm more than sport.
"It's a part of you but its not the be all and end all - it doesn't define you."
Wilson wants her story to serve as an example to other young athletes - to show them "it's very real and it's OK to speak up".
She suspects there have been plenty before her and since who have been lost to sport because they are unwilling to talk about a taboo subject such as mental health.
"When you're strong and you're fast and chuck yourself down the ice at 95mph, it's hard to come to terms with that, actually, inside you feel very weak and vulnerable and unsafe," she said.
"It's great when there's a big championships on TV, but that's the front of it and you don't necessarily see the back.
"I think what's been coming out recently across sports shows there is an issue and there is something with wellbeing that we're not quite getting right."
Crouch told BBC Sport stories such as Wilson's are "incredibly important for us to make sure that we prevent that from happening in the future".
She added: "We always believe sport is good for people suffering from a mental health condition, but what we have perhaps forgotten, or not dealt with, is the mental health and wellbeing of professional sports people."
UK Sport has promised a "root-and-branch review" of culture in high-performance programmes, and appointed a new head of integrity.
The organisation's new chair, former Olympic rower Dame Katherine Grainger, told BBC Sport last month she had "huge concerns about athlete welfare" and that things "need to improve".
• None If you are affected by self-harm, help and support is available at the BBC Action Line
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/winter-sports/40738768
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Grenfell Tower: Corporate manslaughter considered by police - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Council chiefs are told police have "reasonable grounds" to suspect the offence may have been committed.
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UK
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Police investigating the Grenfell Tower fire say they have "reasonable grounds" to suspect that corporate manslaughter offences may have been committed.
It means senior executives from the council and the tenant management organisation that ran the block are likely to be interviewed under caution.
A letter from the Met Police to residents said officers had "seized a huge amount of material".
At least 80 people died in the fire in North Kensington on 14 June.
Organisations guilty of the offence of corporate manslaughter are liable to an "unlimited fine".
Individuals cannot be charged with corporate manslaughter, an offence which is intended to work "in conjunction" with other forms of accountability.
The relevant section of the letter says Met Police officers have "seized a huge amount of material and taken a large number of witness statements".
"After an initial assessment of that information, the officer leading the investigation has today notified the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenancy Management Organisation that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that each organisation may have committed the offence of corporate manslaughter under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007," it said.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. New Kensington and Chelsea council leader Elizabeth Campbell: "I will co-operate in any way I possibly can"
The Met Police also released a statement on Thursday, stating that its investigation into the cause and spread of the fire was a "complex and far reaching investigation that by its very nature will take a considerable time to complete".
Newly elected council leader Elizabeth Campbell, who was booed and heckled at a public meeting earlier this month, said residents "deserve answers" about the blaze and the "police investigation will provide these".
"We fully support the Metropolitan Police investigation and we will co-operate in every way we can," Ms Campbell added.
"It would not be appropriate to comment further on matters subject to the police investigation."
BBC home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds says the Met Police has briefed a number of times that corporate manslaughter is a possible offence, along with breaches of health and safety laws.
The effect of what the police have said is to put both organisations on notice that their senior executives are likely to be questioned under caution in relation to the fire.
This means that evidence can be used against both bodies in a court, our correspondent added.
Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, whose friend Khadija Saye died in the fire, said the punishment for corporate manslaughter, a fine, would not "represent justice for the Grenfell victims and their families".
"Gross negligence manslaughter carries a punishment of prison time, and I hope that the police and the CPS are considering charges of manslaughter caused by gross negligence," he added.
Yvette Williams, a co-ordinator at the Justice 4 Grenfell campaign group, said the development would help increase levels of trust between the police and the community.
"However, what we would like to see running alongside that is individuals being prosecuted. We want is individuals named and prosecuted - you can have both, but we don't want corporate manslaughter on its own," she added.
Kensington and Chelsea Council has been criticised for its response to the Grenfell fire
The local authority has been accused of being slow to react to the disaster on the ground and not doing enough to re-house residents of Grenfell Tower.
Council leader Nicholas Paget-Brown and his deputy Rock Feilding-Mellen resigned following continued criticism of its response to the tragedy.
Robert Black, chief executive of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation, also stepped down to "concentrate on assisting with the investigation and inquiry".
The news comes after site manager at the tower block, Michael Lockwood, told a public meeting on Wednesday that the building would be covered in August.
He said that he expected the demolition of the tower block would begin "towards the end of 2018".
Some possessions could be retrieved from 33 of the block's flats, he added.
The residents of Grenfell Tower had reportedly raised fire safety concerns for several years before the blaze, according to a community action group.
A Newsnight investigation has shown that an official test of the types of materials used at Grenfell Tower suggest that designs such as that used in the tower's cladding are fundamentally flawed.
Prime Minister Theresa May has ordered a public inquiry into the tower fire, which will be led by retired Court of Appeal judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick.
He told survivors at a meeting on Tuesday he would "get to the bottom" of the tragedy but insisted he had "no power" to make arrests over the blaze.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40747241
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Charlie Gard: Deadline passes for care decision - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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If no plan is agreed, he will be moved to a hospice and his life support withdrawn soon after.
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London
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Charlie has been in intensive care since October
The deadline for reaching an agreement over the end-of-life care for terminally-ill Charlie Gard has passed.
Charlie's parents want a private medical team to care for their son in a hospice so they can have days with him before his life support ends.
But Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said it was not in his interests to spend a long period in a hospice.
If no plan is agreed, the 11-month-old will be moved to a hospice and his life support withdrawn soon after.
Charlie's parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, and GOSH had until 12:00 BST to agree his end-of-life care.
His parents have accepted their son could be moved to a hospice, the High Court heard on Wednesday.
Chris Gard has said his son is not expected to live to see his first birthday on 4 August
Their lawyer, Grant Armstrong said they wanted to spend a period of days with him there and nurses from GOSH and a GP had volunteered to provide care for him.
But hospital bosses said they could not agree to the arrangement as his parents had not found a hospice or a paediatric intensive care specialist.
Mr Justice Francis ruled that without an agreement, Charlie will be transferred to a hospice where palliative care will be given to him and his breathing tube withdrawn "shortly after".
The judge added that no details about when he would be moved and where could be made public.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40740693
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Madonna accepts damages over 'invasion of privacy' - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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The singer is said to have suffered "considerable distress" over an article about her adopting twins.
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Entertainment & Arts
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The article appeared before the adoption process was completed
Madonna and her adopted twin daughters have accepted undisclosed damages from Associated Newspapers over a "serious invasion of privacy".
The singer adopted four-year-old twins Stella and Estere in February.
At the time she asked the media to "respect our privacy during this transitional time."
Madonna brought the case at London's High Court over a MailOnline article that caused her "considerable personal distress", her solicitor said.
The article - which appeared in January, before Madonna had formally adopted the twins - revealed the girls' names, race and age.
It also disclosed the fact they lived in an orphanage in Malawi and were the subject of pending applications for adoption by the singer.
The singer was pictured this month with the twins and her other children, David and Mercy
"The MailOnline published it at a time when, as the journalist ought to have appreciated, Madonna would be powerless to protect the girls from harm," solicitor Jenny Afia told Mrs Justice Nicola Davies on Thursday.
"Their actions could, in her view, have threatened the integrity and/or outcome of the adoption process which would have had potentially life-changing implications for the girls, as well as for Madonna and her family."
"Many people in Malawi know of Madonna as an individual of fame and financial means," she went on.
"In the circumstances, Madonna believes that it would (and should) have been self-evident to the reporter that the protection of the girls' identities pending the decision about their potential adoption was likely to be vital for their safety and welfare."
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After the hearing, Ms Afia said: "Madonna brought this litigation because the newspaper threatened her girls' safety by naming them before they were adopted.
"She will always take all possible steps to protect her family's well-being."
Ms Afia added that Madonna would donate the damages to The Mercy James Institute for Paediatric Surgery.
The children's hospital in Malawi opened earlier this month and is named after one of the singer's other adopted daughters.
"She is pleased that at least some good can come out of the situation," Ms Afia said.
Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40740989
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French wildfires: 'The night sky was like Dante's inferno' - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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UK holidaymakers are among those to have been evacuated as wildfires continue to burn.
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UK
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British holidaymakers have described a sky lit up "like Dante's inferno" as wildfires continue to burn in south-eastern France.
More than 10,000 people have been evacuated, according to officials.
Hundreds of firefighters have been tackling the blazes.
But British tourists in the area have told the BBC that a change in the wind direction has seen flames continue to spread. Many are now anxiously waiting for further instructions.
Rob Huckle, 18, is on holiday with his family in Port de Bormes, east of Toulon.
"It's really taking a nasty turn now," he told the BBC.
"It kind of died down in the morning, but the wind has changed direction so [the fire has] blown onto new areas of unburned forest."
Rob Huckle, 18, is on holiday with his family
Mr Huckle, who lives close to Cambridge, said the fire was now as big as he had seen it.
From the apartment where he is staying he saw "thousands" of people being evacuated throughout the night.
"The apartment we're in looks out on to Camp du Domaine," he said.
"People were evacuated from there and from the hillside.
"There were thousands of people on the beach."
Among those evacuated from the Camp du Domaine campsite was Lisa Minot, a travel editor at the Sun newspaper.
She told the BBC: "At 01:00 (local time), what we could see was the orange burning on the horizon, and by 02:00 the campsite decided they had to evacuate us.
"The children… were being pulled down onto the beach by their parents.
This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. "We're still not out of the woods yet" - Lisa Minot, travel editor of the Sun newspaper
"We have a pitch that is right on the beach so we were there and we took in as many of these families as we could, with very young children.
"They are very tired and very, very upset kids now."
Chris Wright is on holiday with his family at the Camp du Domaine campsite
Chris Wright is also holidaying in the Camp du Domaine campsite.
"We were asleep last night and there was a knock on the door," he told the BBC.
"A friend said, 'I don't want to worry you, but you might have to pack a bag to evacuate.'
"We couldn't see anything at first, but as we walked to reception we could see the flames.
"There must have been a thousand people on the beach."
John Grant, on holiday near Bormes-les-Mimosas, told the BBC the night sky was lit up "like Dante's inferno".
"We are regulars to the area and are used to the odd fire but this was certainly larger than anything we had seen previously."
Catherine Prentis told the BBC that people had been instructed to collect valuables and flee
Holidaymakers in Cavalaire-sur-Mer look on as fires continue to burn
Writing on Instagram on Wednesday, Ms Minot said that some tourists were uncertain as to their next movements.
"[The] fire is getting fierce," she said. "We are packed but don't know what to do."
Catherine Prentis, on holiday with her children, was evacuated from the campsite for a second time on Wednesday.
"They're telling us on the Camp du Domaine website to stay away," she said.
"The last update we had was that the flames were near the gates of the site.
"We don't know what to do. Our campsite is about a mile away from where we are now.
"People here are windsurfing, swimming, having fun - but if you look behind you, there's a cloud of smoke covering the campsite."
She said planes collecting water to fight the fires were "having to dodge the windsurfers".
"They've not really realised the carnage that's going on."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40726002
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Premier League wins anti-piracy court order - BBC News
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2017-07-27
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https://www.facebook.com/bbcnews
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Ruling will allow the league to combat the illicit use of devices such as pre-loaded IPTV and Kodi boxes.
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Business
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The Premier League has been awarded a High Court order for the forthcoming 2017-18 season, which will help it combat the illegal streaming of games.
The blocking order will require UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent people from illegally accessing streams of its matches.
It will allow the league to combat the illicit sale and use of devices such as pre-loaded IPTV and Kodi boxes.
A similar order was obtained for the final two months of the 2016-17 season.
That saw more than 5,000 server IP addresses blocked that had previously been streaming Premier League content.
Sky and BT Sport hold the live rights for Premier League football. The two firms paid a record £5.136bn for rights to show live matches for three seasons.
Kodi is free software, built by volunteers, that is designed to bring videos, music, games and photographs together in one easy-to-use application.
Some shops sell set-top boxes and TV sticks known as Kodi boxes, preloaded with the software.
The developers behind Kodi say their software does not contain any content of its own and is designed to play legally owned media or content "freely available" on the internet.
However, the software can be modified with third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated copies of films and TV series, or provide free access to subscription television channels and programmes, including sports events.
The English top flight League is currently undertaking its biggest ever copyright protection programme.
Its anti-piracy efforts have also contributed to a range of prominent apps and add-ons being closed down as the law catches up with them.
"This blocking order is a game-changer in our efforts to tackle the supply and use of illicit streams of our content," said Premier League Director of Legal Services, Kevin Plumb.
"It will allow us to quickly and effectively block and disrupt the illegal broadcast of Premier League football via any means, including so called 'pre-loaded Kodi boxes'.
"The protection of our copyright, and the investment made by our broadcast partners, is hugely important to the Premier League and the future health of English football."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40727972
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